Introduction

This tutorial illustrates the splicing nomenclature for exon-level splicing events identified from short-read RNA-sequencing. Splicing nomenclatures simply consists of genomic coordinates. These coordinates are used as unique identifiers (tran_id) for splicing events. Splicing ID describes the coordinates of the constitutive and alternative exons. Accurate descriptions of these coordinates enables accurate identification of splicing events, and hence lead to reproducible analysis.

Nevertheless, researchers do not often make clear the location of these coordinates relative to the exons and introns. Here, we aim to explicitly illustrate the meaning of splicing nomenclature.

Skipped-exon (SE)

Forward strand

Reverse strand

Mutually excl. exons (MXE)

Forward strand

Reverse strand

Retained-intron (RI)

Forward strand

Reverse strand

Alt. 5’ splice site (A5SS)

Forward strand

Reverse strand

Alt. 3’ splice site (A5SS)

Forward strand

Reverse strand