Elav-Mediated Exon Skipping and Alternative Polyadenylation of the Dscam1 Gene Are Required for Axon Outgrowth (Cell Reports)

Like most metazoan genes, Dscam1 expresses alternative short and long 3´ UTR mRNAs. Zhang et al. find that loss of Dscam1 long 3´ UTR transcripts impairs axon outgrowth in Drosophila. Long-read sequencing reveals that these long 3´ UTR mRNAs preferentially skip an upstream exon, altering Dscam1 amino acid sequence.