Craig, HL, Wirtz, J, Bamps, S et al. (2 more authors) (2013) The significance of alternative transcripts for Caenorhabditis elegans transcription factor genes, based on expression pattern analysis. BMC Genomics, 14. ARTN 249. ISSN 1471-2164
Abstract
Background: Sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins, with their paramount importance in the regulation of expression of the genetic material, are encoded by approximately 5% of the genes in an animal’s genome. But it is unclear to what extent alternative transcripts from these genes may further increase the complexity of the transcription factor complement. Results: Of the 938 potential C. elegans transcription factor genes, 197 were annotated in WormBase as encoding at least two distinct isoforms. Evaluation of prior evidence identified, with different levels of confidence, 50 genes with alternative transcript starts, 23 with alternative transcript ends, 35 with alternative splicing and 34 with alternative transcripts generated by a combination of mechanisms, leaving 55 that were discounted. Expression patterns were determined for transcripts for a sample of 29 transcription factor genes, concentrating on those with alternative transcript starts for which the evidence was strongest. Seamless fosmid recombineering was used to generate reporter gene fusions with minimal modification to assay expression of specific transcripts while maintaining the broad genomic DNA context and alternative transcript production. Alternative transcription factor gene transcripts were typically expressed with identical or substantially overlapping distributions rather than in distinct domains. Conclusions: Increasingly sensitive sequencing technologies will reveal rare transcripts but many of these are clearly non-productive. The majority of the transcription factor gene alternative transcripts that are productive may represent tolerable noise rather than encoding functionally distinct isoforms.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2013 Craig et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly. |
Keywords: | Animals; Caenorhabditis elegans; Exons; Gene expression profiling; Introns; Protein Isoforms; RNA, messenger; Spatio-temporal analysis; Transcription factors |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 14 Apr 2014 11:28 |
Last Modified: | 14 Apr 2014 11:28 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-14-249 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BioMed Central |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/1471-2164-14-249 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:78339 |