Information AboutTranscriptomics |
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APPLICATIONS AND ANALYSIS The transcriptomes of Stem Cell s and Cancer cells are of particular interest to researchers who seek to understand the processes of Cellular Differentiation and Carcinogenesis . A number of organism-specific transcriptome databases have been constructed and annotated to aid in the identification of genes that are differentially expressed in distinct cell populations or subtypes; however, the analysis of relative mRNA expression levels can be complicated by the fact that relatively small changes in mRNA expression can produce large changes in the total amount of the corresponding protein present in the cell. One analysis method, known as Gene Set Enrichment Analysis, identifies coregulated gene networks rather than individual genes that are up- or down-regulated in different cell populations. MRNA REGULATION Although microarray studies can reveal the relative amounts of different mRNAs in the cell, levels of mRNA are not directly proportional to the expression level of the Protein s they code for. The number of protein molecules synthesized using a given mRNA molecule as a template is highly dependent on transcription-initiation features of the mRNA sequence; in particular, the ability of the Promoter region is a key determinant in the recruiting of Ribosome s for protein Translation . The complete protein complement of a cell or organism is known as the Proteome . A study of 158,807 mouse transcripts revealed that 4520 of these transcripts form antisense partners that are base pair complementary to the exons of genes. These results raise the possibility that significant numbers of "antisense RNA-coding genes" might participate in the regulation of the levels of expression of protein-coding mRNAs. REFERENCES |
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