Alu
            splicing

Alu elements and post-transcriptional processing of transcripts.

    The majority of human genes include transposable Alu repetitive elements in their introns. These elements are bounded by AAAA and TTTT sequences, which allow both transposition among introns and formation of hairpin loops.  If these sequences accumulate mutations, they may wrongly signal transcriptional processing events, which can result in alternative splicing of exons and (or) altered polyadenylation, which may affect gene function.


Figure from Deininger (2011) Genome Biology 12:236 ; text ©2013 by Steven M. Carr