Transcriptome instability is a genome-wide, pre-mRNA splicing-related characteristic of certain cancers. In general, pre-mRNA splicing is dysregulated in a high proportion of cancerous cells.[1][2][3] For certain types of cancer, like in colorectal and prostate, the number of splicing errors per cancer has been shown to vary greatly between individual cancers, a phenomenon referred to as transcriptome instability.[4][5] Transcriptome instability correlates significantly with reduced expression level of splicing factor genes. Mutation of DNMT3A contributes to development of hematologic malignancies, and DNMT3A-mutated cell lines exhibit transcriptome instability as compared to their isogenic wildtype counterparts.[6]
^Skotheim, R I; Nees, M (2007). "Alternative splicing in cancer: noise, functional, or systematic?". The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology. 39 (7–8): 1432–49. doi:10.1016/j.biocel.2007.02.016. PMID17416541.