A nuclear RNA-protein complex that plays a role in RNA processing. In the nucleoplasm, the U1 snRNP along with other small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (U2, U4-U6, and U5) assemble into SPLICEOSOMES that remove introns from pre-mRNA by splicing. The U1 snRNA forms base pairs with conserved sequence motifs at the 5'-splice site and recognizes both the 5'- and 3'-splice sites and may have a fundamental role in aligning the two sites for the splicing reaction.
