cryptic intron - (Jul/27/2013 )

Dear all,

could someone explain to me what a cryptic intron is?

I tried to google it, but I am still a bit unsure what it means.

thanks

Well, cryptic means "hidden" so it would be an intron that is only seen under certain circumstances, and is normally part of an exon.

bob1 on Sat Jul 27 21:29:45 2013 said:

Well, cryptic means "hidden" so it would be an intron that is only seen under certain circumstances, and is normally part of an exon.

Ok.

But does this also mean that this intron is also "active", I mean it produces a real working protein? Or is it just something that went wrong during splicing, thus meaning a wrong intron (not working)? Or is it some sort of alternative splicing that doesnt happen a lot?

I guess that it would mean that it is functional as an intron, but perhaps only in certain circumstances.  I guess that would make it an intermittent alternative splice variant.