Hyperconserved Elements in Human 5'UTRs Shape Essential Post-transcriptional Regulatory Networks.

ABSTRACT: Post-transcriptional regulation (PTR) of gene expression is a powerful determinant of cellular phenotypes. The 5' and 3' untranslated regions of the mRNA (UTRs) mediate this role through sequence and secondary structure elements bound by RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and non-coding RNAs. While functional regions in the 3'UTRs have been extensively studied, the 5'UTRs are still relatively uncharacterized. To fill this gap, we used a computational approach exploiting phylogenetic conservation to identify hyperconserved elements in human 5'UTRs (5'HCEs). Our assumption was that 5'HCEs would represent evolutionarily stable and hence important PTR sites. We identified over 5000 5'HCEs occurring in 10% of human protein-coding genes. These sequence elements are rather short and mostly found in narr

SUBMITTER: Zuccotti P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7484617 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature