Transcriptomics: Open Access
Open Access
ISSN: 2329-8936
ISSN: 2329-8936
Ahsan Huda
Tanzania
Research Article
Widespread Exonization of Transposable Elements in Human Coding Sequences is Associated with Epigenetic Regulation of Transcription
Author(s): Ahsan Huda and Pierre R BushelAhsan Huda and Pierre R Bushel
Background: Transposable Elements (TEs) have long been regarded as selfish or junk DNA having little or no role in the regulation or functioning of the human genome. However, over the past several years this view came to be challenged as several studies provided anecdotal as well as global evidence for the contribution of TEs to the regulatory and coding needs of human genes. In this study, we explored the incorporation and epigenetic regulation of coding sequences donated by TEs using gene expression and other ancillary genomics data from two human hematopoietic cell-lines: GM12878 (a lymphoblastoid cell line) and K562 (a Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia cell line). In each cell line, we found several thousand instances of TEs donating coding sequences to human genes. We compared the transcriptome assembly of the RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) reads with and without the aid of a reference tran.. View More»
DOI:
10.4172/2329-8936.1000101