Accumulating evidence indicates an important role for non-coding RNA molecules ineukaryotic cell regulation. A small number of coding and non-coding overlapping antisensetranscripts (OATs) in eukaryotes have been reported, some of which regulate expression ofthe corresponding sense transcript. The prevalence of this phenomenon is unknown, butthere may be an enrichment of such transcripts at imprinted gene loci. Taking a bioinformaticsapproach, we systematically searched a human mRNA database (RefSeq) for complementaryregions that might facilitate pairing with other transcripts. We report 56 pairsof overlapping transcripts, in which each member of the pair is transcribed from the samelocus. This allows us to make an estimate of 1000 for the minimum number of suchtranscript pairs in the entire human genome. This is a surprisingly large number ofoverlapping gene pairs and, clearly, some of the overlaps may not be functionallysignificant. Nonetheless, this may indicate an important general role for overlappingantisense control in gene regulation. EST databases were also investigated in order toaddress the prevalence of cases of imprinted genes with associated non-coding overlapping,antisense transcripts. However, EST databases were found to be completely inappropriatefor this purpose.
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