Background: Polyadenylation is a key regulatory step in eukaryotic gene expression and one of the major contributors of transcriptome diversity. Aberrant polyadenylation often associates with expression defects and leads to human diseases.Results: To better understand global polyadenylation regulation, we have developed a polyadenylation sequencing (PA-seq) approach. By profiling polyadenylation events in 13 human tissues, we found that alternative cleavage and polyadenylation (APA) is prevalent in both protein-coding and noncoding genes. In addition, APA usage, similar to gene expression profiling, exhibits tissue-specific signatures and is sufficient for determining tissue origin. A 3′ untranslated region shortening index (USI) was further developed for genes with tandem APA sites. Strikingly, the results showed that different tissues exhibit distinct patterns of shortening and/or lengthening of 3′ untranslated regions, suggesting the intimate involvement of APA in establishing tissue or cell identity.Conclusions: This study provides a comprehensive resource to uncover regulated polyadenylation events in human tissues and to characterize the underlying regulatory mechanism. © 2013 Ni et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
CITATION STYLE
Ni, T., Yang, Y., Hafez, D., Yang, W., Kiesewetter, K., Wakabayashi, Y., … Zhu, J. (2013). Distinct polyadenylation landscapes of diverse human tissues revealed by a modified PA-seq strategy. BMC Genomics, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-14-615
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.