Alternate Polyadenylation in Human mRNAs: A Large-Scale Analysis by EST Clustering (original) (raw)

1. Daniel Gautheret1,
2. Olivier Poirot,
3. Fabrice Lopez,
4. Stéphane Audic, and
5. Jean-Michel Claverie
6. Structural and Genetic Information, Center National de la Recherche Scientifique—E.P. 91, 13 402 Marseille Cedex 20, France

Abstract

Alternate polyadenylation is an important post-transcriptional regulatory process now open to large-scale analysis by use of cDNA databases. We clustered 164,000 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) into ∼15,000 groups and aligned each group to a putative mRNA 3′ end. By use of stringent criteria to discard artifactual mRNA extremities, clear evidence for alternate polyadenylation was obtained in 189 of the 1000 EST clusters studied. A number of previously unreported polyadenylation sites were identified, together with possible instances of tissue-specific differential polyadenylation. This study demonstrates that, besides quantitative aspects of gene expression, the distribution of alternate mRNA forms can be analyzed through EST sampling.

Footnotes

• ↵1 Corresponding author.

• E-MAIL gauthere{at}igs.cnrs-mrs.fr; FAX (33) 4 91 16 45 49.

• • Received November 17, 1997.
  • Accepted February 17, 1998.

• Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

•