Melissa Moore (U. Mass/HHMI) Part 1: Split Genes and RNA Splicing

https://www.ibiology.org/genetics-and... In the first part of her talk, Dr. Moore explains that eukaryotic pre-mRNA contains long stretches of non-protein coding sequences interspersed with protein coding regions. By recognizing specific sequences, cellular machinery splices out the non-coding introns leaving just the protein-coding exons in mRNA. Although at first glance this may seem like a wasteful process, it is splicing that facilitates the evolution of new genes, and alternative splicing that allows a limited number of genes to produce a large number of proteins.