A workshop entitled Spliceosome Assembly and Alternative RNA Splicing will be held in France in September. The meeting is being organized under the aegis of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and will be limited to 70-90 participants, at least half of whom will be Americans. A great variety of cellular and viral genes rely on a regulated program of alternative splicing for appropriate tissue and stage-specific gene expression. This meeting will focus on the molecular mechanisms of regulated alternative splicing and, as such, is the first to be devoted to this important level of gene regulation. Rapid preliminary progress is now being made in understanding the biochemistry of alternative splicing in a number of specific systems. Three sessions of the meeting will focus on new developments in splice site selection and four sessions will deal with the mechanisms of alternative splicing in viruses and cellular genes. The meeting will end with a workshop on practical aspects of establishing tissue-specific splicing extracts, so that the systems can be studied and manipulated in vitro.
