Project description:Gene expression profiling of immortalized human mesenchymal stem cells with hTERT/E6/E7 transfected MSCs. hTERT may change gene expression in MSCs. Goal was to determine the gene expressions of immortalized MSCs.
Project description:We have sequenced miRNA libraries from human embryonic, neural and foetal mesenchymal stem cells. We report that the majority of miRNA genes encode mature isomers that vary in size by one or more bases at the 3’ and/or 5’ end of the miRNA. Northern blotting for individual miRNAs showed that the proportions of isomiRs expressed by a single miRNA gene often differ between cell and tissue types. IsomiRs were readily co-immunoprecipitated with Argonaute proteins in vivo and were active in luciferase assays, indicating that they are functional. Bioinformatics analysis predicts substantial differences in targeting between miRNAs with minor 5’ differences and in support of this we report that a 5’ isomiR-9-1 gained the ability to inhibit the expression of DNMT3B and NCAM2 but lost the ability to inhibit CDH1 in vitro. This result was confirmed by the use of isomiR-specific sponges. Our analysis of the miRGator database indicates that a small percentage of human miRNA genes express isomiRs as the dominant transcript in certain cell types and analysis of miRBase shows that 5’ isomiRs have replaced canonical miRNAs many times during evolution. This strongly indicates that isomiRs are of functional importance and have contributed to the evolution of miRNA genes
Project description:Background:Alternative splicing and isoform level expression profiling is an emerging field of interest within genomics. Splicing sensitive microarrays, with probes targeted to individual exons or exon-junctions, are becoming increasingly popular as a tool capable of both expression profiling and finer scale isoform detection. Despite their intuitive appeal, relatively little is known about the performance of such tools, particularly in comparison with more traditional 3’ targeted microarrays. Here, we use the well studied Microarray Quality Control (MAQC) dataset to benchmark the Affymetrix Exon Array, and compare it to two other popular platforms: Illumina, and Affymetrix U133. Results:We show that at the gene expression level, the Exon Array performs comparably with the two 3’ targeted platforms. However, the interplatform correlation of the results is slightly lower than between the two 3’ arrays. We show that some of the discrepancies stem from the RNA amplification protocols, e.g. the Exon Array is able to detect expression of non-polyadenylated transcripts. More importantly, we show that many other differences result from the ability of the Exon Array to monitor more detailed isoform-level changes; several examples illustrate that changes detected by the 3’ platforms are actually isoform variations, and that the nature of these variations can be resolved using Exon Array data. Finally, we show how the Exon Array can be used to detect alternative isoform differences, such as alternative splicing, transcript termination, and alternative promoter usage. We discuss the possible pitfalls and false positives resulting from isoform-level analysis. Conclusions:The Exon Array is a valuable tool that can be used to profile gene expression while providing important additional information regarding the types of gene isoforms that are expressed and variable. However, analysis of alternative splicing requires much more hands on effort and visualization of results in order to correctly interpret the data, and generally results in considerably higher false positive rates than expression analysis. One of the main sources of error in the MAQC dataset is variation in amplification efficiency across transcripts, which is not adequately corrected using existing statistical methods. We outline approaches to reduce such errors by filtering out potentially problematic data. Keywords: Compare the Affymetrix Exon Array 1.0 ST to Illumina, and Affymetrix U133 platforms
Project description:Background:Alternative splicing and isoform level expression profiling is an emerging field of interest within genomics. Splicing sensitive microarrays, with probes targeted to individual exons or exon-junctions, are becoming increasingly popular as a tool capable of both expression profiling and finer scale isoform detection. Despite their intuitive appeal, relatively little is known about the performance of such tools, particularly in comparison with more traditional 3’ targeted microarrays. Here, we use the well studied Microarray Quality Control (MAQC) dataset to benchmark the Affymetrix Exon Array, and compare it to two other popular platforms: Illumina, and Affymetrix U133. Results:We show that at the gene expression level, the Exon Array performs comparably with the two 3’ targeted platforms. However, the interplatform correlation of the results is slightly lower than between the two 3’ arrays. We show that some of the discrepancies stem from the RNA amplification protocols, e.g. the Exon Array is able to detect expression of non-polyadenylated transcripts. More importantly, we show that many other differences result from the ability of the Exon Array to monitor more detailed isoform-level changes; several examples illustrate that changes detected by the 3’ platforms are actually isoform variations, and that the nature of these variations can be resolved using Exon Array data. Finally, we show how the Exon Array can be used to detect alternative isoform differences, such as alternative splicing, transcript termination, and alternative promoter usage. We discuss the possible pitfalls and false positives resulting from isoform-level analysis. Conclusions:The Exon Array is a valuable tool that can be used to profile gene expression while providing important additional information regarding the types of gene isoforms that are expressed and variable. However, analysis of alternative splicing requires much more hands on effort and visualization of results in order to correctly interpret the data, and generally results in considerably higher false positive rates than expression analysis. One of the main sources of error in the MAQC dataset is variation in amplification efficiency across transcripts, which is not adequately corrected using existing statistical methods. We outline approaches to reduce such errors by filtering out potentially problematic data. Keywords: Compare the Affymetrix Exon Array 1.0 ST to Illumina, and Affymetrix U133 platforms
Project description:Background:Alternative splicing and isoform level expression profiling is an emerging field of interest within genomics. Splicing sensitive microarrays, with probes targeted to individual exons or exon-junctions, are becoming increasingly popular as a tool capable of both expression profiling and finer scale isoform detection. Despite their intuitive appeal, relatively little is known about the performance of such tools, particularly in comparison with more traditional 3’ targeted microarrays. Here, we use the well studied Microarray Quality Control (MAQC) dataset to benchmark the Affymetrix Exon Array, and compare it to two other popular platforms: Illumina, and Affymetrix U133. Results:We show that at the gene expression level, the Exon Array performs comparably with the two 3’ targeted platforms. However, the interplatform correlation of the results is slightly lower than between the two 3’ arrays. We show that some of the discrepancies stem from the RNA amplification protocols, e.g. the Exon Array is able to detect expression of non-polyadenylated transcripts. More importantly, we show that many other differences result from the ability of the Exon Array to monitor more detailed isoform-level changes; several examples illustrate that changes detected by the 3’ platforms are actually isoform variations, and that the nature of these variations can be resolved using Exon Array data. Finally, we show how the Exon Array can be used to detect alternative isoform differences, such as alternative splicing, transcript termination, and alternative promoter usage. We discuss the possible pitfalls and false positives resulting from isoform-level analysis. Conclusions:The Exon Array is a valuable tool that can be used to profile gene expression while providing important additional information regarding the types of gene isoforms that are expressed and variable. However, analysis of alternative splicing requires much more hands on effort and visualization of results in order to correctly interpret the data, and generally results in considerably higher false positive rates than expression analysis. One of the main sources of error in the MAQC dataset is variation in amplification efficiency across transcripts, which is not adequately corrected using existing statistical methods. We outline approaches to reduce such errors by filtering out potentially problematic data. This SuperSeries is composed of the SubSeries listed below.