反义RNA影响癌症中对应的有义基因的启动子使用

Natural antisense transcripts (NATs) are those RNAs transcribed from the same locus, but in the opposite direction to a sense gene transcript. non-coding NATs (ncNATs) have been reported to modulate key biological events such as cell differentiation and carcinogenesis through gene expression regulation; nevertheless, their actual impact on cancer remains largely unknown. Due to their low expression levels and their overlap with sense genes, the study of ncNATs using RNA-seq is challenging. Public databases frequently register incomplete sequences of ncNATs, and mostly in a not tissue-specific manner. In the present study, we aim to better characterize the nature of ncNATs expressed in liver and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). For that, we performed strand-specific RNA-seq in 6 pairs of HCC - normal adjacent liver tissues from 6 HCC patients. Knowing the strand origin of the reads, we will be able to determine the actual nature and span of those ncNATs expressed in the liver and in HCC.