Splicing Control of Pontocerebellar Development.

In this issue of Neuron, Chai et al. (2021) analyze several families with neurodegeneration and marked pontocerebellar hypoplasia and microcephaly and identify recessive (bi-allelic) mutations in peptidyl-prolyl isomerase-like 1 (PPIL1) and pre-RNA-processing-17 (PPR17). PPIL1 patient mutation knockin mice develop neuronal apoptosis. Loss of either protein affects splicing predominantly involving GC-rich and short introns.