murecursive

Murecursive is a term that has appeared in a handful of computational genetics and bioinformatics papers to describe a putative regulatory protein that facilitates recursive splicing events in the eukaryotic genome. The name derives from “murex,” a Latin word for a type of shellfish, and the concept of sequence recursion. According to the earliest description, the murecursive protein is encoded by the MURE gene, which is conserved in a subset of vertebrate species.

The protein is predicted to contain an RNA‑binding domain similar to the RRM motif and a C‑terminal domain that may interact with spliceosomal components. Functional assays in cultured human cells suggest that knockdown of MURE reduces the efficiency of recursive splicing in a set of long introns, although the exact mechanism remains untested. Subsequent studies using CRISPR/Cas9 editing in zebrafish have reported phenotypic abnormalities related to neural development, hinting at a broader role in post‑transcriptional regulation.

Because murecursive has not been widely validated, its existence is sometimes treated with caution. Some researchers view it as an artifact of transcriptome assembly or a misannotated viral protein, whereas others argue that the observed phenotypes are reproducible and reflect a novel layer of gene regulation. The term has not yet entered common usage outside of the papers that first reported it, and its classification as a protein family remains provisional pending further experimental evidence.