3'UTR-dependent activity of transcription factors and chromatin regulators [RNA-seq]

Over 2700 human mRNAs have highly conserved 3'UTRs, but their biological functions are unknown. These mRNAs enrich for transcriptional regulators. Therefore, we performed RNA-seq to determine the roles of 3'UTRs in controlling the cellular activity of selected transcriptional regulators, here MYC and UTX. RNA-seq profiling of U2OS or MCF7 cell lines transfected with cDNA vectors encoding the transcription factor MYC or the histone demethylase UTX. Gene expression profiles were compared to control, after each protein was expressed from an mRNA template that only contained the coding sequence (-NU) or that contained the coding sequence and its full-length 3'UTR (-U).