Expression patterns of cancer-related genes and their putative antisense transcripts in normal and colon cancer tissues

ABSTRACT: Background: Recent studies have identified thousands of sense-antisense gene pairs across different genomes by computational mapping of cDNA sequences. These studies have shown that approximately 25% of all transcriptional units in the human and mouse genomes are involved in cis-sense-antisense pairs. However, the number of known sense-antisense pairs remains limited because currently available cDNA sequences represent only a fraction of the total number of transcripts comprising the transcriptome of each cell type. Results: To discover novel antisense transcripts encoded in the antisense strand of important genes, such as cancer-related genes, we conducted expression analyses of antisense transcripts using our custom microarray platform along with 2376 probes designed specifically to detect the potential antisense transcripts of 501 well-known genes suitable for cancer research. Using colon cancer tissue and normal tissue surrounding the cancer tissue obtained from 6 patients, we found that antisense transcripts without poly(A) tails are expressed from approximately 80% of these well-known genes. This observation is consistent with our previous finding that many antisense transcripts expressed in a cell are poly(A)-. We also identified 101 and 71 antisense probes displaying a high level of expression specifically in normal and cancer tissues respectively. Some of these probes showed characteristic expression patterns which are anti-correlated with the expression patterns of the sense genes. Conclusion: Our microarray analysis identified novel antisense transcripts with expression profiles specific to cancer tissue, some of which might play a role in the regulatory networks underlying oncogenesis and thus are potential targets for further experimental validation.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE14397 | GEO | 2011/03/01

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA111373

REPOSITORIES: GEO