Transcriptional bursts explain autosomal random monoallelic expression and affect allelic imbalance.

ABSTRACT: Transcriptional bursts render substantial biological noise in cellular transcriptomes. Here, we investigated the theoretical extent of allelic expression resulting from transcriptional bursting and how it compared to the amount biallelic, monoallelic and allele-biased expression observed in single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. We found that transcriptional bursting can explain the allelic expression patterns observed in single cells, including the frequent observations of autosomal monoallelic gene expression. Importantly, we identified that the burst frequency largely determined the fraction of cells with monoallelic expression, whereas the burst size had little effect on monoallelic observations. The high consistency between the bursting model predictions and scRNA-seq observatio

SUBMITTER: Larsson AJM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7978379 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature