LongSAGE analysis revealed the presence of a large number of novel antisense genes in the mouse genome.
BACKGROUND
Despite the increasing notions of the functional importance of antisense transcripts in gene regulation, the genome-wide overview on the ontology of antisense genes has not been obtained. Therefore, we tried to find novel antisense genes genome-wide by using our LongSAGE dataset of 202 015 tags (consisting of 41 718 unique tags), experimentally generated from mouse embryonic tail libraries.


RESULTS
We identified 1260 potential antisense genes, of which 1001 are not annotated in EnsEMBL, thereby being regarded as novel. Interestingly their sense counterparts were co-expressed in the majority of the cases.


CONCLUSIONS
The use of LongSAGE transcriptome data is extremely powerful in the identification of thus-far unknown antisense transcripts, even in the case of well-characterized organisms like the mouse.


BACKGROUND
imai@gsf.de.
Wahl
Matthias B
MB
Institute of Developmental Genetics, GSF-National Research Center for Environment and Health, Ingolstädter Landstrasse 1, D-85764 Neuherberg, Germany.
Heinzmann
Ulrich
U
Imai
Kenji
K
D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D002874:Chromosome Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D016373:DNA, Antisense / Q000235:genetics*; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D016415:Sequence Alignment / Q000379:methods*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*
D016373:DNA, Antisense