In vitro coupled transcription splicing.

Many convincing studies published in recent years strongly support coupling of transcription and pre-mRNA processing. Despite key advances in our understanding of these processes, there is a lack of a robust in vitro system in which to study the mechanism of this coupling for complex pre-mRNAs. Here, we describe an in vitro system capable of transcribing and splicing complex transcripts with three and four exons. We also demonstrate how the system can be used to study exon silencing in vitro. We believe that this system will be a useful tool to study the mechanisms that mediate the coupling of transcription and pre-mRNA processing.