Global analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans operons

ABSTRACT: Caenorhabditis elegans and its relatives are unique among animals, possibly even among eukaryotes, in having operons. In these regulated multigene transcription units, a polycistronic pre-mRNA is processed to monocistronic mRNAs by 3' end formation and trans-splicing utilizing a special snRNP, the SL2 snRNP, for downstream mRNAs1. Previously, the correlation between downstream location in an operon and SL2 trans-splicing has been strong, but anecdotal. Although only 28 operons have been reported previously, the complete sequence of the genome reveals numerous gene clusters. To determine how many represent operons, we probed full-genome microarrays for SL2-containing mRNAs. We found significant enrichment for about 1200 genes including most of a group of several hundred genes represented

ORGANISM(S): Caenorhabditis elegans

SUBMITTER: Chris Link 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-2975 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress