title: Strategies to identify natural antisense transcripts.
abstract: Natural antisense transcripts, originally considered as transcriptional noises arising from so-called "junk DNA″, are recently recognized as important modulators for gene regulation. They are prevalent in nearly all realms of life and have been found to modulate gene expression positively or negatively. By affecting almost all stages of gene expression range from pre-transcriptional, transcriptional and post-transcriptional to translation, NATs are fundamentally involved in various biological processes. However, compared to increasing huge data from transcriptional analysis especially high-throughput sequencing technologies (such as RNA-seq), limited functional NATs (around 70) are so far reported, which hinder our advanced comprehensive understanding for this field. Hence, efficient strategies for identifying NATs are urgently desired. In this review, we discussed the current strategies for identifying NATs, with a focus on the advantages, disadvantages, and applications of methods isolating functional NATs. Moreover, publicly available databases for NATs were also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Space Biosciences & Biotechnology, Institute of Special Environmental Biophysics, School of Life Sciences, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, PR China.
authors.forename: Yulong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Space Biosciences & Biotechnology, Institute of Special Environmental Biophysics, School of Life Sciences, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, PR China.
authors.forename: Dijie
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Space Biosciences & Biotechnology, Institute of Special Environmental Biophysics, School of Life Sciences, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, PR China.
authors.forename: Ru
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Space Biosciences & Biotechnology, Institute of Special Environmental Biophysics, School of Life Sciences, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, PR China.
authors.forename: Shang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: Institute for Advancing Translational Medicine in Bone & Joint Diseases, School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Ge
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Hong-Hui Hospital, Xi'an Jiaotong University College of Medicine, South Door Slightly Friendship Road 555, Xi' an Shaan Xi Province, 710054, PR China. Electronic address: doctoryangtm@163.com.
authors.forename: Tuanmin
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Space Biosciences & Biotechnology, Institute of Special Environmental Biophysics, School of Life Sciences, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, PR China. Electronic address: qianair@nwpu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Airong
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Qian
mesh_terms: D021901:DNA, Intergenic / Q000235:genetics*; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D015894:Genome, Human / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D008967:Molecular Biology / Q000379:methods; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods; D016372:RNA, Antisense / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA / Q000379:methods; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D021901:DNA, Intergenic; D016372:RNA, Antisense
keywords: Long noncoding RNA; Microarray; Natural antisense transcripts; RACE; RNA-ChIP; RNA-Seq