Figure 2.

A schematic depicting the kinetic coupling system. During transcription, the major spliceosome is assembled and attached to the signaled splice sites. As illustrated in the left panel, when histones are deacetylated, chromatin are more tightly compacted, allowing for a slower elongation rate. As a result, splicing factors are recruited to a weak splice site, leading to exon inclusion. The right panel shows that histone acetylation creates a more open chromatin structure, allowing for a faster elongation rate, which promotes splicing factors recruitment to the strong splice site, resulting in exon exclusion.