Parallel evolution of a splicing program controlling neuronal excitability in flies and mammals.

Alternative splicing increases neuronal transcriptomic complexity throughout animal phylogeny. To delve into the mechanisms controlling the assembly and evolution of this regulatory layer, we characterized the neuronal microexon program in and compared it with that of mammals. In nonvertebrate bilaterians, this splicing program is restricted to neurons by the posttranscriptional processing of the (eMIC) domain in .