A natural antisense transcript of notch-1 regulates cell cycle
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Here we demonstrate a natural antisense transcript of notch-1 that interacts with the sense transcript and regulates its availability and pace of G1 phase of cell cycle.
Project description:Increasing numbers of sense–antisense transcripts (SATs), which are transcribed from the same chromosomal location but in opposite directions, have been identified in various eukaryotic species, but the biological meanings of most SATs remain unclear. To improve understanding of natural sense–antisense transcription, we performed comparative expression profiling of SATs conserved among humans and mice. Using custom oligo-arrays loaded with probes that represented SATs with both protein-coding and non-protein–coding transcripts, we showed that 33% of the 291 conserved SATs displayed identical expression patterns in the two species. Among these SATs, expressional balance inversion of sense–antisense genes was mostly observed in testis at a tissue-specific manner. Northern analyses of the individual conserved SAT loci revealed that: (1) a smeary hybridization pattern was present in mice, but not in humans, and (2) small RNAs (about 60 to 80 nt) were detected from the exon-overlapping regions of SAT loci. In addition, further analyses showed marked alteration of sense–antisense expression balance throughout spermatogenesis in testis. These results suggest that conserved SAT loci are rich in potential regulatory roles that will help us understand this new class of transcripts underlying the mammalian genome. Keywords: Expression profile of mouse and human sense-antisense transcript
Project description:The histone variant H2A.Z, which has been reported to have both activating and repressive effects on gene expression, is known to occupy nucleosomes at the 5’ ends of protein-coding genes. We now find that H2A.Z is also significantly enriched in gene coding regions and at the 3’ ends of genes in budding yeast, where it co-localises with histone marks associated with active promoters. By comparing H2A.Z binding to global gene expression in budding yeast strains engineered so that normally unstable transcripts are abundant, we show that H2A.Z is required for normal levels of antisense transcripts as well as sense ones. High levels of H2A.Z at antisense promoters are associated with decreased antisense transcript levels when H2A.Z is deleted, indicating that H2A.Z has an activating effect on antisense transcripts. Decreases in antisense transcripts affected by H2A.Z are accompanied by increased levels of paired sense transcripts. Therefore, the effect of H2A.Z on protein coding gene expression is a reflection of its importance for normal levels of both sense and antisense transcripts.
Project description:Comparison of sense (forward probes) and antisense (reverse probes on U74 v1 gene arrays) transcripts in mouse kidney and brain. Positive calls related to antisense transcripts were compared to the cognate signals on the 430 version of mouse genome arrays to obtain genes that co expressed sense and antisense transcripts. This had to be done manually because divergent probe IDs on the two chip generations. Experiment Overall Design: The first Affymetrix U74 mouse gene chips contains reversely oriented probe sets. These probes will hybridize to natural antisense transcripts that overlap with the sense transcript in the cognate area. Affymetrix provided a mask to identify the reverse probes. Positive calls with these reverse probes will give an estimate of the antisense transcriptome in that particular tissue. Comparison of the reversely oriented probes with correctly annotated probes will reveal the expression ratio of sense and antisense transcripts.
Project description:<p>High throughput RNA Sequencing has revealed that the human genome is widely transcribed. However, the extent of natural antisense transcription, the molecular mechanisms by which natural antisense transcripts (NATs) might affect their cognate sense genes, and the role of NATs in cancer are less well understood. Here, we use strand-specific paired-end RNA sequencing (ssRNASeq) on a cohort of 376 cancer patients covering 9 tissue types to comprehensively characterize the landscape of antisense expression. Our results reveal that greater than 60% of annotated transcripts have measureable antisense expression and the expression of sense and antisense transcript pairs is in general positively correlated. Furthermore, by studying the expression of sense/antisense pairs across tissues we identify lineage-specific, ubiquitous and cancer-specific antisense loci. Our results raise the possibility that NATs participate in the regulation of well-known tumor suppressors and oncogenes. Finally, this study provides a catalogue of cancer related genes with significant antisense transcription (oncoNAT). This resource will allow researchers to investigate the molecular mechanisms of sense/antisense regulation and further advance our understanding of their role in cancer.</p>
Project description:In yeast, alcohol dehydrogenase I (Adh1) is an abundant zinc binding protein that is required for the conversion of acetaldehyde to ethanol. Through transcriptome profiling of the Schizosaccharomyces pombe genome, we identified a natural antisense transcript at the adh1 locus that is induced in response to zinc-limitation. This antisense transcript (adh1AS) shows a reciprocal expression pattern to that the adh1 mRNA partner. In this study we show that increased expression of the adh1AS transcript in zinc-limited cells is necessary for the repression of adh1 gene expression and that the increased level of the adh1AS transcript in zinc-limited cells is a result of two mechanisms. At the transcriptional level, the adh1AS transcript is expressed at a high level in zinc-limited cells. In addition to this transcriptional control, adh1AS transcripts preferentially accumulate in zinc-limited cells when the adh1AS transcript is expressed from a constitutive promoter. This secondary mechanism requires the simultaneous expression of adh1. Our studies reveal how multiple mechanisms can synergistically control the ratio of sense to antisense transcripts, and highlight a novel mechanism by which adh1 gene expression can be controlled by cellular zinc availability Sense and antisense expression of the S. pombe transcriptome was measured under zinc-limiting and zinc-replete conditions, using 3 replicates of each condition and an anti-RNA/DNA antibody labeling technique.
Project description:The histone variant H2A.Z, which has been reported to have both activating and repressive effects on gene expression, is known to occupy nucleosomes at the 5’ ends of protein-coding genes. We now find that H2A.Z is also significantly enriched in gene coding regions and at the 3’ ends of genes in budding yeast, where it co-localises with histone marks associated with active promoters. By comparing H2A.Z binding to global gene expression in budding yeast strains engineered so that normally unstable transcripts are abundant, we show that H2A.Z is required for normal levels of antisense transcripts as well as sense ones. High levels of H2A.Z at antisense promoters are associated with decreased antisense transcript levels when H2A.Z is deleted, indicating that H2A.Z has an activating effect on antisense transcripts. Decreases in antisense transcripts affected by H2A.Z are accompanied by increased levels of paired sense transcripts. Therefore, the effect of H2A.Z on protein coding gene expression is a reflection of its importance for normal levels of both sense and antisense transcripts. Htz1 ChIP-seq in wild-type (WT) and rrp6Δ yeast, along with negative control ChIP-seq in htz1Δ and input control. Strand-specific transcriptomic profiles of WT, htz1Δ, rrp6Δ and htz1Δrrp6Δ. Replicates are present for all samples except the negative and input control ChIP samples.
Project description:The Affymetrix GeneChip Wheat Genome Array currently provides the most comprehensive coverage of the wheat genome for a microarray. In addition to using this resource for transcript expression studies and hybridization-based DNA marker discovery, we endeavored to use the GeneChip to discover the expression of natural antisense transcript (NAT) pairs. By using alternative target preparation schemes, both the sense- and antisense-strand derived transcripts were labeled and hybridized to the Wheat GeneChip. To enable maximum discovery, five different tissue types were selected for assay, and the wheat cultivar ‘Chinese Spring’ was used considering that most of the GeneChip probe sequences were based on sequencing of this genome. [PLEXdb(http://www.plexdb.org) has submitted this series at GEO on behalf of the original contributor, Tristan Coram. The equivalent experiment is TA21 at PLEXdb.]
Project description:Comparison of sense (forward probes) and antisense (reverse probes on U74 v1 gene arrays) transcripts in mouse kidney and brain. Positive calls related to antisense transcripts were compared to the cognate signals on the 430 version of mouse genome arrays to obtain genes that co expressed sense and antisense transcripts. This had to be done manually because divergent probe IDs on the two chip generations. Keywords: Qualitative comparison of expression