title: Antisense overlapping open reading frames in genes from bacteria to humans.
abstract: Long Open Reading Frames (ORFs) in antisense DNA strands have been reported in the literature as being rare events. However, an extensive analysis of the GenBank database revealed that a substantial number of genes from several species contain an in-phase ORF in the antisense strand, that overlaps entirely the coding sequence of the sense strand, or even extends beyond. The findings described in this paper show that this is a frequent, non-random phenomenon, which is primarily dependent on codon usage, and to a lesser extent on gene size and GC content. Examination of the sequence database for several prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms, demonstrates that coding sequences with in-phase, 100% overlapping antisense ORFs are present in every genome studied so far.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biología Molecular, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Cuernavaca.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Merino
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Balbás
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Puente
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bolívar
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000596:Amino Acids / Q000032:analysis; D000818:Animals; D001482:Base Composition; D001483:Base Sequence; D003062:Codon; D016373:DNA, Antisense / Q000235:genetics*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics; D005796:Genes; D016678:Genome; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D006801:Humans; D016366:Open Reading Frames / Q000235:genetics*; D016364:Reading Frames
chemical_list: D000596:Amino Acids; D003062:Codon; D016373:DNA, Antisense