Abstract
In Arabidopsis thaliana, there are about 2,000 transcription factors. These transcription factors are expected to make complicated regulation networks. On the other hand, we found about 12% of all genes undergone alternative splicing in Arabidopsis. It is possible that alternative splicing events occurred in pre-mRNAs encoding transcription factors make transcriptional networks more complicated. We analyzed alternative splicing events on Arabidopsis transcription factors, and studied the effect of alternative splicing events on transcriptional networks. We found about 100 (5% on all) genes undergone alternative splicing out of 1,968 transcription factor genes. The fraction of the alternative splicing events was small. But in several transcription factor families, bHLH, C2C2-type Zn-finger and CCAAT-binding factor, we found comparatively large number of alternative splicing events. We also found that the alternative splicing events often affected non-DNA-binding regions and UTRs. It was indicated that alternative splicing events had important role for fine-tuning of transcription factor functions.
