Opportunities and methods for studying alternative splicing in cancer with RNA-Seq

The biogenesis, development and metastases of cancer are associated with many variations in the transcriptome. Alternative splicing of genes is a major post-transcriptional regulation mechanism that is involved in many types of cancer. The next-generation sequencing applied on RNAs (RNA-Seq) provides a new technology for studying transcriptomes. It provides an unprecedented opportunity for quantitatively studying alternative splicing in a systematic way. This mini-review summarizes the current RNA-Seq studies on cancer transcriptomes especially studies on cancer-related alternative splicing, and discusses the strategy for quantitative study of alternative splicing in cancers with RNA-Seq, the bioinformatics methods available and existing questions.