The availability of the complete sequence of the
genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Goffeau et
al., 1996) and other organisms has provided a substantial
amount of information on their chromosomal organization.
We need now to understand the coordinated expression of
the many genes present in a given genome and the function
of the various encoded proteins. Microarrays (DNA chips)
offer the opportunity to analyze nucleic acids at the genomic
scale and have been used to perform global gene expression
studies (Lander, 1999). However, these techniques also
have the potential to give us a new perspective on posttranscriptional
processes involved in the regulation of gene expression.
We provide here a striking example through the investigation
of yeast pre-mRNA splicing. Our analysis demonstrates that
pre-mRNA splicing is quantitatively a much more important
process in this species than previously thought and shows
that splicing-signal conservation is correlated with transcription
efficiency.