UC Santa Cruz

We have developed a novel machine-learning approach, MutPred Splice, for the identification of coding region substitutions that disrupt pre-mRNA splicing. Applying MutPred Splice to human disease-causing exonic mutations suggests that 16% of mutations causing inherited disease and 10 to 14% of somatic mutations in cancer may disrupt pre-mRNA splicing. For inherited disease, the main mechanism responsible for the splicing defect is splice site loss, whereas for cancer the predominant mechanism of splicing disruption is predicted to be exon skipping via loss of exonic splicing enhancers or gain of exonic splicing silencer elements. MutPred Splice is available at http://mutdb.org/mutpredsplice.