E-Mail Researchers from Russia and Germany have created a genome-wide atlas of developmental alternative splicing changes of seven organs in six mammal species and chicken. The research was published in the journal As the protein encoding RNA matures in eukaryotes, it gets spliced, with some parts cut out and the remaining fragments stitched together. Alternative splicing means that the same RNA fragment can either be cut out from or kept within the mature RNA. In this case, one gene can encode several RNAs and, therefore, several proteins. Although alternative splicing is known to be essential for many tissues to develop and function properly and its various disorders may cause health problems, its function and regulation on genome-wide level are still very poorly understood. Comparative research on alternative splicing in different species has been performed mostly on adult organisms, but scientists believe that alternative splicing plays a very important role in an organism's development.