Novel alternative splicing in the 5′ exon of the neurotrophin-3 gene

THE neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) gene has previously been reported to consist of three exons including two 5' short untranslated exons and a 3' long exon encoding the entire protein, and to give rise to two classes of transcripts by alternative splicing of the 5' exons to the 3' coding exon. In the present study, we demonstrated the presence of at least four new classes of transcripts of the NT-3 gene, in addition to the two known transcripts. The present finding proposes the further complexity of the regulational mechanism for NT-3 expression. NeuroReport 9: 3675-3679 (C) 1998 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.