Chronic alcohol might also alter other gene splicing events. However, GABAB1 is the major splicing target following chronic alcohol since it showed the most known splicing junction changes per 1,000bp gene length among GABAB signaling pathway genes (Table S6 in Supplement 1). Taken together, these results raise the possibility that splicing alteration may reduce GABAB receptor function in alcoholic brains, and future functional studies addressing this hypothesis are warranted. This hypothesis is consistent with studies showing chronic alcohol treatment reduces GABAB receptor function in brain (40).
