Project description:Alternative cleavage and polyadenylation (APA) is emerging as an important mechanism of gene regulation in eukaryotes and plays important regulatory roles in human development and diseases. Despite the widespread application of Second Generation Sequencing (SGS) technology for polyadenylation site identification, matching each identified polyadenylation site within a gene to its derived isoform remains a major challenge. To achieve the isoform-resolved APA analysis, we developed a tool termed “IDP-APA” that constructs truly expressed isoforms and identifies polyadenylation sites by integrating the respective strengths of Third Generation Sequencing (TGS) long reads and SGS short reads. Compared to existing tools, IDP-APA demonstrated superior performance in both isoform reconstruction and polyadenylation site identification. Applications to human embryonic stem cells, breast cancer cells and brain tissue from a patient with Alzheimer’s disease revealed prevalent APA events and cell-/tissue-specific APA patterns, especially in an isoform-resolved way.
Project description:Through alternative processing of pre-mRNAs, individual mammalian genes often produce multiple mRNA and protein isoforms that may have related, distinct or even opposing functions. Here we report an in-depth analysis of 15 diverse human tissue and cell line transcriptomes based on deep sequencing of cDNA fragments, yielding a digital inventory of gene and mRNA isoform expression. Analysis of mappings of sequence reads to exon-exon junctions indicated that ~94% of human genes undergo alternative splicing (AS), ~86% with a minor isoform frequency of 15% or more. Differences in isoform-specific read densities indicated that a majority of AS and alternative cleavage and polyadenylation (APA) events exhibit variation between tissues. Variations in alternative mRNA isoform expression between 6 individuals were also detected in cerebellar cortex, with ~2- to 3-fold less isoform variation observed between individuals than between tissues. Extreme or 'switch-like' regulation of splicing between tissues was associated with increased sequence conservation and with generation of full-length open reading frames. Patterns of AS and APA were strongly correlated across tissues, suggesting coordinated regulation, and sequence conservation of known regulatory motifs in both regulated introns and 3' UTRs suggested common involvement of the same factors in regulation of tissue-specific splicing and polyadenylation. Exam mRNA expression in 15 human tissues and cell lines
Project description:Through alternative processing of pre-mRNAs, individual mammalian genes often produce multiple mRNA and protein isoforms that may have related, distinct or even opposing functions. Here we report an in-depth analysis of 15 diverse human tissue and cell line transcriptomes based on deep sequencing of cDNA fragments, yielding a digital inventory of gene and mRNA isoform expression. Analysis of mappings of sequence reads to exon-exon junctions indicated that ~94% of human genes undergo alternative splicing (AS), ~86% with a minor isoform frequency of 15% or more. Differences in isoform-specific read densities indicated that a majority of AS and alternative cleavage and polyadenylation (APA) events exhibit variation between tissues. Variations in alternative mRNA isoform expression between 6 individuals were also detected in cerebellar cortex, with ~2- to 3-fold less isoform variation observed between individuals than between tissues. Extreme or 'switch-like' regulation of splicing between tissues was associated with increased sequence conservation and with generation of full-length open reading frames. Patterns of AS and APA were strongly correlated across tissues, suggesting coordinated regulation, and sequence conservation of known regulatory motifs in both regulated introns and 3' UTRs suggested common involvement of the same factors in regulation of tissue-specific splicing and polyadenylation.
Project description:Polyadenylated RNA from individual germinal vesicle and metaphase II ooyctes was amplified and processed for Illumina sequencing. Increases in polyadenylated transcript abundance were observed and are likely due to cytoplasmic polyadenylation. Transcriptomic analysis of GV and MII bovine oocytes.
Project description:Most eukaryotic genes express alternative polyadenylation (APA) isoforms with different lengths of 3’ untranslated region (3’UTR). Here we show arsenic stress elicits global shortening of 3’UTRs through two mechanisms. First, stress leads to immediate shortening of 3’UTR due to preferential usage of proximal cleavage and polyadenylation sites (PASs), as revealed by 3’ end sequencing of newly made RNAs that are metabolically labeled with 4-thiouridine. Second, long 3’UTR isoforms are more rapidly degraded during recovery from stress as compared to short 3’UTR isoforms, further shortening 3’UTR lengths in the cell. Using ribonucleoprotein immunoprecipitation coupled with 3’ end sequencing (3’READS+RIP), we show that the RNA-binding protein T cell-restricted intracellular antigen-1 (Tia1) preferentially interacts with long 3’UTR isoforms via U-rich elements in alternative 3’UTR sequences, and the interaction correlates with stress granule (SG) association during stress and with mRNA decay during recovery from stress, indicating SG-mediated RNA clearance mechanism post stress. Importantly, genes whose 3’UTRs are shortened by APA during stress can evade stress-induced 3’UTR size-based mRNA degradation, leading to higher transcript abundance post stress. Moreover, proliferating and differentiated cells display different extents of 3’UTR shortening after stress, indicating cell type-specific of impact of stress on the 3’UTR landscape. Together, our data indicate that 3’UTR length plays important roles in gene expression in stressed cells, and APA functions as an adaptive stress response mechanism to preserve mRNAs.
Project description:Polyadenylated RNA from individual germinal vesicle and metaphase II ooyctes was amplified and processed for Illumina sequencing. Increases in polyadenylated transcript abundance were observed and are likely due to cytoplasmic polyadenylation.
Project description:Cigarette smoking accounts for approximately one in five deaths in the United States. Previous genomic studies have primarily focused on gene level differential expression to identify related molecular signatures and pathways, but the genome-wide effects of smoking on alternative isoform regulation and posttranscriptional modulation have not yet been described. We attempted to fill this void by identifying smoking-associated isoform switches and their responsible splicing events and consequences using RNA-seq.