Transcription start sites at the end of protein-coding genes

Abstract

Previous studies demonstrated that massive induction of transcriptional readthrough generates downstream of gene-containing transcripts (DoGs) in cells under stress condition. Here, we analyzed TSS-seq (transcription start site sequencing) data from the DBTSS database. We investigated TSS tags at the end of gene for all pan-stress and untreated-cell DoGs, in comparison with expression-matched non-DoGs. We observed significantly more TSS tags at the end of pan-stress and untreated-cell DoG genes than non-DoG genes, even though their TSS tags in the promoter is the same. Importantly, the median value of TSS tags at gene end normalized to gene promoter is significantly higher than the median expression ratio of short DoG to host gene and of long DoG to host gene. Our results indicate that downstream overlapping long non-coding RNAs derived from the TSS at the gene end may be an important source of DoGs.