title: RNA-DNA differences are rarer in proto-oncogenes than in tumor suppressor genes.
abstract: It has long been assumed that DNA sequences and corresponding RNA transcripts are almost identical; a recent discovery, however, revealed widespread RNA-DNA differences (RDDs), which represent a largely unexplored aspect of human genome variation. It has been speculated that RDDs can affect disease susceptibility and manifestations; however, almost nothing is known about how RDDs are related to disease. Here, we show that RDDs are rarer in proto-oncogenes than in tumor suppressor genes; the number of RDDs in coding exons, but not in 3'UTR and 5'UTR, is significantly lower in the former than the latter, and this trend is especially pronounced in non-synonymous RDDs, i.e., those cause amino acid changes. A potential mechanism is that, unlike proto-oncogenes, the requirement of tumor suppressor genes to have both alleles affected to cause tumor 'buffers' these genes to tolerate more RDDs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Randy Ren
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D020413:3' Untranslated Regions; D020121:5' Untranslated Regions; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics*; D005091:Exons; D016147:Genes, Tumor Suppressor; D011519:Proto-Oncogenes; D012313:RNA / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D020413:3' Untranslated Regions; D020121:5' Untranslated Regions; D012313:RNA; D004247:DNA