Species Human Entrez 11338 | Human Mouse Ensembl ENSG00000063244 | |
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Aliases U2AF2, U2AF65, U2 small nuclear RNA auxiliary factor 2 External IDs MGI: 98886 HomoloGene: 110853 GeneCards: U2AF2 | ||
Splicing factor U2AF 65 kDa subunit is a protein that in humans is encoded by the U2AF2 gene.
Contents
Function
U2 auxiliary factor (U2AF), composed of a large and a small subunit, is a non-snRNP protein required for the binding of U2 snRNP to the pre-mRNA branch site. This gene encodes the U2AF large subunit, which contains a sequence-specific RNA-binding region with 3 RNA recognition motifs and an Arg/Ser-rich domain necessary for splicing. The large subunit binds to the polypyrimidine tract of introns early during spliceosome assembly. Multiple alternatively spliced transcript variants have been detected for this gene, but the full-length natures of only two have been determined to date.
In humans and other tetrapods, it has been shown that without U2AF2, the splicing process is inhibited. However, in zebrafish and other teleosts the RNA splicing process can still occur on certain genes in the absence of U2AF2. This may be because 10% of genes have alternating TG and AC base pairs at the 3' splice site (3'ss) and 5' splice site (5'ss) respectively on each intron, which alters the secondary structure of the RNA and influences splicing.
Interactions
U2AF2 has been shown to interact with: