Figure 1.

Pre-mRNAs-mRNAs conversion induced by NOVAs. The splicing occurs predominantly in the nucleus where spliceosome complexes (red spheres) bind to YCAY motifs and remove introns from growing pre-mRNAs (co-transcriptional process). Further splicing takes place in the cytoplasm (including dendrites near synapses), with spliceosomes operative on pre-mRNAs (pre-translation process), making possible their subsequent translation. The long blue filaments are pre-mRNAs, the shorter filaments are the results of ongoing or complete conversion into mRNAs. (details from Ref. [24]).