Here, we describe an initial effort to answer these questions using a large-scale computational analysis of ESTs derived from about two dozen human tissues, which were aligned to the assembled human genome sequence to infer patterns of AS occurring in thousands of human genes. Our results distinguish specific tissues as having high levels and distinctive patterns of AS, identify pronounced differences between the proportions of alternative 5' splice site and alternative 3' splice site usage between tissues, and predict candidate cis-regulatory elements and trans-acting factors involved in tissue-specific AS.
