Revised genomic structure of the human ghrelin gene and identification of novel exons, alternative splice variants and natural antisense transcripts.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Ghrelin is a multifunctional peptide hormone expressed in a range of normal tissues and pathologies. It has been reported that the human ghrelin gene consists of five exons which span 5 kb of genomic DNA on chromosome 3 and includes a 20 bp non-coding first exon (20 bp exon 0). The availability of bioinformatic tools enabling comparative analysis and the finalisation of the human genome prompted us to re-examine the genomic structure of the ghrelin locus.

Results

We have demonstrated the presence of an additional novel exon (exon -1) and 5' extensions to exon 0 and 1 using comparative in silico analysis and have demonstrated their existence experimentally using RT-PCR and 5' RACE. A revised exon-intron structure demonstrates that the human ghrelin gene spans 7.2 k

SUBMITTER: Seim I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2014779 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature