Key Words: Spinal muscular atrophy, Alternative pre-mRNA splicing, SMN genes, Exon 7,

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is caused by loss of SMN1. A nearly identical gene, SMN2, fails to compensate for the loss of SMN1 because SMN2 produces mainly an exon 7-skipped product. The +6C in SMN1 exon 7 proceeds to include exon 7 into mRNA, while the +6U in SMN2 causes skipping of exon 7. Here, ∼45kD proteins bound to the SMN exon 7 RNA probe was found, and identified as hnRNP C1/C2. In gel-shift assay, hnRNP C1/C2 had a greater affinity for the RNA probe with +6C than for the RNA probe with +6U. In vitro splicing assay showed that anti-hnRNP C1/C2 antibody hampered splicing of SMN1 exon 7, but did not affect splicing of SMN2 exon 7. In conclusion, we showed the possibility that hnRNP C1/C2 enhanced SMN1 exon 7 splicing specifically. Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a common autosomal recessive neuromuscular disorder that is characterized by degeneration of the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord, which leads to the axial and limb weakness associated with muscle atrophy. SMA is caused by the homologous deletion and/or deleterious mutation of the SMN1 gene, which encodes the protein SMN (15). SMN is a component of nuclear structures known as gems, suggestin