Evidence for widespread existence of functional novel and non-canonical human transcripts.
BMC Biol
; 21(1): 271, 2023 11 24.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38001496
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Fraction of functional sequence in the human genome remains a key unresolved question in Biology and the subject of vigorous debate. While a plethora of studies have connected a significant fraction of human DNA to various biochemical processes, the classical definition of function requires evidence of effects on cellular or organismal fitness that such studies do not provide. Although multiple high-throughput reverse genetics screens have been developed to address this issue, they are limited to annotated genomic elements and suffer from non-specific effects, arguing for a strong need to develop additional functional genomics approaches.RESULTS:
In this work, we established a high-throughput lentivirus-based insertional mutagenesis strategy as a forward genetics screen tool in aneuploid cells. Application of this approach to human cell lines in multiple phenotypic screens suggested the presence of many yet uncharacterized functional elements in the human genome, represented at least in part by novel exons of known and novel genes. The novel transcripts containing these exons can be massively, up to thousands-fold, induced by specific stresses, and at least some can represent bi-cistronic protein-coding mRNAs.CONCLUSIONS:
Altogether, these results argue that many unannotated and non-canonical human transcripts, including those that appear as aberrant splice products, have biological relevance under specific biological conditions.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
DNA
/
Genômica
Limite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article