Figure 1.

Diversification of proteomic and transcriptional outputs through constitutive or alternative splicing. More than 95% of introns are rapidly degraded after splicing (top left panel), but some can escape degradation and then represent precursors of short ncRNA [148] (top right panel). Retained introns can also favour the formation of protein isoforms (bottom left panel) or, if it disturbs the ORF, it can promote the formation of a long ncRNAs (bottom right panel). Exons and introns are represented by boxes and lines, respectively. mRNA, messenger RNA; ncRNA, non-coding RNA; H/ACA snoRNA, H/ACA box small nucleolar RNA; C/D snoRNA, C/D small nucleolar RNA