Digital gene expression and global mapping of polyadenylation sites with PolyA-Seq

We describe PolyA-Seq, a strand-specific method for high-throughput sequencing of the 3' ends of polyadenylated transcripts. PolyA-Seq is as accurate for digital gene expression as existing RNA sequencing approaches, and superior to microarrays. We used the approach to map polyadenylation (polyA) sites in 24 samples from normal tissues in human, rhesus, dog, mouse, and rat. Overall design: Detection of polyA sites in a mixture of 24 tissues in human, mouse, rat, dog and rhesus. Samples included two replicates each of MAQC Human Brain Reference and MAQC Universal Human Reference. Two additional human sets of reads are included that were used to distinguish true polyA sites from internal priming sites.