Large ribonucleoprotein complex composed of snRNP and other components, which splices the introns of nuclear RNA transcripts into messenger RNA to be transported to the cytoplasm for translation.

Organelles in which the splicing and excision reactions that remove introns from precursor messenger RNA molecules occur. One component of a spliceosome is five small nuclear RNA molecules (U1, U2, U4, U5, U6) that, working in conjunction with proteins, help to fold pieces of RNA into the right shapes and later splice them into the message.

(spliceosomal complex) Any of a series of ribonucleoprotein complexes that contain snRNA(s) and small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs), and are formed sequentially during the spliceosomal splicing of one or more substrate RNAs, and which also contain the RNA substrate(s) from the initial target RNAs of splicing, the splicing intermediate RNA(s), to the final RNA products. During cis-splicing, the initial target RNA is a single, contiguous RNA transcript, whether mRNA, snoRNA, etc., and the released products are a spliced RNA and an excised intron, generally as a lariat structure. During trans-splicing, there are two initial substrate RNAs, the spliced leader RNA and a pre-mRNA.