Figures & data
Figure 1. Balance between transcriptional activity and splicing capability regulates intron-retention during germ cell differentiation. High transcriptional activity of meiotic spermatocytes (left panel) generates high levels of transcripts for intron-retaining genes (blue genes). Weak introns of these genes are not efficiently recognized by the spliceosome and their unspliced transcripts are consequently retained in the nucleus. The lower transcriptional activity of post-meiotic spermatids (right panel) then allows efficient splicing of such intron-retaining genes, whose transcripts are efficiently exported in the cytoplasm and translated into proteins.
