The rodless isoform of plectin was already detected at the time when plectin was first cloned from a rat glioma C6 cell cDNA library [114], but it was not identified as a variant arising from alternative splicing of a single exon (exon 31) encoding the entire rod domain of plectin, until the exon intron structure of the rat plectin gene was established [3]. The gene discussed is PLEC; the disease is central nervous system cancer.