Long-range bidirectional transcription is a general feature of developmental gene promoters in mammals (RNA-Seq 1)
Recent studies have revealed a myriad of non-coding transcripts in different organisms. For instances, the presence of short bidirectional transcripts is a hallmark of active promoters in mammals, while upstream non-coding transcripts can be detected at most expressed genes in conditions where the RNA degradation machinery is inhibited. Here, we used RNA-seq with very high sequencing depth to characterize strand specific transcripts from primary mouse tissues. We found that a substantial fraction of gene promoters sustain expression of long non-coding antisense transcripts. These transcripts have an average size of 6 kb, have features of mature transcripts, but remain associated with the chromatin. We named this new class of non-coding RNAs Long Upstream Antisense Transcripts (LUAT). Strikingly, the LUAT and coding gene pairs are usually co-regulated, with the associated genes often/generally coding for transcriptional regulators functioning during development and cell differentiation. Indeed, these bidirectional promoters share several characteristic of developmental gene promoters, including large CpG islands and high degree of conservation, and display symetrical GC skews. Finally, we found that bidirectional promoters have enlarged platforms of Pol II initiation, associated with an intensified rate of early transcriptional elongation. We concluded that promoters of developmental regulators are characterized by a specialized mechanism of Pol II transcription, whereby Pol II poising is directly coupled to relaxed bidirectional transcription. Overall design: Expression of noncoding RNA transcripts in CD4-,CD8- double negative thymocytes from Rag2-/- mice was studied by strand-specific, ribosomal-depleted RNA-seq experiment, using  paired-end sequencing on AB SOLiD System 4.0