Systematic Identification of Regulatory Elements in Conserved 3' UTRs of Human Transcripts

Overview

Journal Cell Rep

Publisher Cell Press

Specialties Biology
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology

Date 2014 Mar 25

PMID 24656821

Citations 45

Authors

Panos Oikonomou

Hani Goodarzi

Saeed Tavazoie

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Posttranscriptional regulatory programs governing diverse aspects of RNA biology remain largely uncharacterized. Understanding the functional roles of RNA cis-regulatory elements is essential for decoding complex programs that underlie the dynamic regulation of transcript stability, splicing, localization, and translation. Here, we describe a combined experimental/computational technology to reveal a catalog of functional regulatory elements embedded in 3' UTRs of human transcripts. We used a bidirectional reporter system coupled with flow cytometry and high-throughput sequencing to measure the effect of short, noncoding, vertebrate-conserved RNA sequences on transcript stability and translation. Information-theoretic motif analysis of the resulting sequence-to-gene-expression mapping revealed linear and structural RNA cis-regulatory elements that positively and negatively modulate the posttranscriptional fates of human transcripts. This combined experimental/computational strategy can be used to systematically characterize the vast landscape of posttranscriptional regulatory elements controlling physiological and pathological cellular state transitions.

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