The parasite Trichomonas vaginalis expresses thousands of pseudogenes and long non-coding RNAs independently from functional neighbouring genes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The human pathogen Trichomonas vaginalis is a parabasalian flagellate that is estimated to infect 3% of the world's population annually. With a 160 megabase genome and up to 60,000 genes residing in six chromosomes, the parasite has the largest genome among sequenced protists. Although it is thought that the genome size and unusual large coding capacity is owed to genome duplication events, the exact reason and its consequences are less well studied.

Results

Among transcriptome data we found thousands of instances, in which reads mapped onto genomic loci not annotated as genes, some reaching up to several kilobases in length. At first sight these appear to represent long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), however, about half of these lncRNAs have significant sequence simi

SUBMITTER: Woehle C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4223856 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature