Spliceosome
A spliceosome is a complex of special RNA and protein subunits. Spliceosomes are amazingly complex molecular machines.[1] They remove introns from a transcribed pre-mRNA segment. This process is generally referred to as splicing.
Each spliceosome is composed of five small nuclear RNAs, (snRNA)s, and more than 50 proteins.[1]
Spliceosome Media
Spliceosomal splicing cycle
Figure 1. Above are electron microscopy fields of negatively stained yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) tri-snRNPs. Below left is a schematic illustration of the interaction of tri-snRNP proteins with the U4/U6 snRNA duplex. Below right is a cartoon model of the yeast tri-snRNP with shaded areas corresponding to U5 (gray), U4/U6 (orange) and the linker region (yellow).
