Biological functions of natural antisense transcripts - PubMed (original) (raw)

Biological functions of natural antisense transcripts

Andreas Werner. BMC Biol. 2013.

Abstract

In theory, the human genome is large enough to keep its roughly 20,000 genes well separated. In practice, genes are clustered; even more puzzling, in many cases both DNA strands of a protein coding gene are transcribed. The resulting natural antisense transcripts can be a blessing and curse, as many appreciate, or simply transcriptional trash, as others believe. Widespread evolutionary conservation, as recently demonstrated, is a good indicator for potential biological functions of natural antisense transcripts.

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Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Schematic arrangements of transcripts from bi-directionally transcribed genes (sense exons are in red, antisense exons are in blue).

Figure 2

Figure 2

Established cellular mechanisms related to the transcription of natural antisense transcripts. Top panel: over-expression of an antisense transcript (in blue) causes the modification and concomitant silencing of the sense promoter. The exact mechanism of how the repressive chromatin marks are established is yet unknown. Middle panel: in RNA masking, the antisense transcript directly interacts with the sense transcript (in red) and occludes regulatory sequences. Bottom panel: in RNA interference, sense and antisense transcripts hybridize and the double-stranded RNA is further processed by the RNA interference-linked enzymatic machinery. This may lead to post-transcriptional or transcriptional gene silencing. endo-siRNA, endogenous small interfering RNA; miRNA, microRNA.

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