Oligonucleotide microarray analysis of expression patterns associated with alternatively spliced transcripts has often been used in studies of human disease but has not been widely applied in plants [10, 19, 31].
Notably, helminth-induced impairment of antiviral immunity was evident in germ-free mice, but neutralization of Ym1, a chitinase-like molecule that is associated with alternatively activated macrophages, could partially restore antiviral immunity.
Such sequences are often associated with alternatively spliced exons, where they act as splicing silencers (e.g. [17] [20]).
IGF-I is an angiogenic factor that affects fetal nutrition and size (reviewed in [46] and its expression is associated with alternatively activated macrophages [22], [47], in agreement with the angiogenic characteristics of this cell type.
Kmers positively correlated with the exon-level skipping score are associated with alternatively spliced exons, while negatively correlated kmers are associated with constitutively spliced exons.
Lyko et al. (2010) discovered that clusters of methylated cytosines are associated with alternatively spliced exons and that intron containing genes are more methylated than intron-less genes.
Chronic inflammation is associated with alternatively activated MΦs by Th2 cytokines which result in transformation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) and fibrosis [ 4, 5].
Furthermore, we found that the occurrence of GAAGAA is biased towards exons with weak splice sites, while the other identified motifs associated with alternatively skipped exons do not have splice strength specificity.
Indeed, Th2-associated alternatively activated macrophages express specific chemokines [16] that preferentially attract Th2 cells [17].
Roughly speaking, we can associate the alternatively normalized Bcd profiles with Family I.
While small in number, these 43 disorder-associated alternatively spliced regions and 18 mixed-structure regions are significantly larger than the 14 regions associated with regions of structure.
