title: Tiling array analysis of UV treated Escherichia coli predicts novel differentially expressed small peptides.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Despite comprehensive investigation, the Escherichia coli SOS response system is not yet fully understood. We have applied custom designed whole genome tiling arrays to measure UV invoked transcriptional changes in E. coli. This study provides a more complete insight into the transcriptome and the UV irradiation response of this microorganism.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We detected a number of novel differentially expressed transcripts in addition to the expected SOS response genes (such as sulA, recN, uvrA, lexA, umuC and umuD) in the UV treated cells. Several of the differentially expressed transcripts might play important roles in regulation of the cellular response to UV damage. We have predicted 23 novel small peptides from our set of detected non-gene transcripts. Further, three of the predicted peptides were cloned into protein expression vectors to test the biological activity. All three constructs expressed the predicted peptides, in which two of them were highly toxic to the cell. Additionally, a remarkably high overlap with previously in-silico predicted non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) was detected. Generally we detected a far higher transcriptional activity than the annotation suggests, and these findings correspond with previous transcription mappings from E. coli and other organisms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Here we demonstrate that the E. coli transcriptome consists of far more transcripts than the present annotation suggests, of which many transcripts seem important to the bacterial stress response. Sequence alignment of promoter regions suggest novel regulatory consensus sequences for some of the upregulated genes. Finally, several of the novel transcripts identified in this study encode putative small peptides, which are biologically active.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience (CMBN) and Department of Microbiology, Rikshospitalet, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Gard O S
authors.initials: GO
authors.lastname: Thomassen
authors.forename: Ragnhild
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Weel-Sneve
authors.forename: Alexander D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Rowe
authors.forename: James A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Booth
authors.forename: Jessica M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Lindvall
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lagesen
authors.forename: Knut I
authors.initials: KI
authors.lastname: Kristiansen
authors.forename: Magnar
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bjørås
authors.forename: Torbjørn
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rognes
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000378:metabolism*; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000378:metabolism; D022661:RNA, Untranslated / Q000235:genetics; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013014:SOS Response, Genetics; D014158:Transcription, Genetic; D014466:Ultraviolet Rays
chemical_list: D010455:Peptides; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D022661:RNA, Untranslated