New isoforms of human mitochondrial transcription factor A detected in normal and tumoral cells.

Novel alternatively spliced variants of the human mitochondrial transcription factor A predicted by the computational tool ASPic were experimentally validated in different normal and tumoral human tissues by RT-PCR and DNA sequencing. The comparison between the 5'UTR length and the distribution of the different transcripts showed that the transcripts with the shortest 5'UTR are present in all the investigated tissues, while the longest 5'UTR seems to be related to tissue-specificity. Studies about the localization and function of the most widely diffuse alternative isoform Tr6 were carried out.