Spliceosome
A spliceosome is an enzyme involved in the process of transcription. Because DNA contains a large amount of non-coding information (introns). when mRNA is transcrived it also contains non-coding information. This is of no use to the mRNA as the non-coding information does not need to be transcribed. The splicesome is the enzyme that splices the introns out of pre-mRNA to give the final mRNA product ready for translation.
The spliceosome contains five snRNAs (small nuclear RNAs), named U1, U2, U3, U4 U5 and U6 that are less than 200 nucleotides each[1], which perform the splicing procedure. Each snRNA is complexed with several protein subunits, no less than 7, to form a snRNP (small nuclear ribonucleoprotein), and these snRNP molecules form the core of the spliceosome.
References
- ↑ B.Alberts, A.Johnson, J.Lewis, M.Raff, K.Roberts, P.Walter (2008) Molecular Biology of the Cell 5th Edition p349-350 New York; Garland Science