Regulated functional alternative splicing in Drosophila

Alternative splicing expands the coding capacity of metazoan genes, and it was largely genetic studies in the fruit-fly Drosophila melanogaster that established the principle that regulated alternative splicing results in tissue- and stage-specific protein isoforms with different functions in development. Alternative splicing is particularly prominent in germ cells, muscle and the central nervous system where it modulates the expression of various proteins including cell-surface molecules and transcription factors. Studies in flies have given us numerous insights into alternative splicing in terms of upstream regulation, the exquisite diversity of their forms and the key differential cellular functions of alternatively spliced gene products. The current inundation of transcriptome sequencing data from Drosophila provides an unprecedented opportunity to gain a comprehensive view of alternative splicing.