Role of Alternative Polyadenylation during Adipogenic Differentiation: An In Silico Approach

Post-transcriptional regulation of stem cell differentiation is far from being completely understood. Changes in protein levels are not fully correlated with corresponding changes in mRNAs; the observed differences might be partially explained by post-transcriptional regulation mechanisms, such as alternative polyadenylation. This would involve changes in protein binding, transcript usage, miRNAs and other non-coding RNAs. In the present work we analyzed the distribution of alternative transcripts during adipogenic differentiation and the potential role of miRNAs in post-transcriptional regulation. Our in silico analysis suggests a modest, consistent, bias in 3′UTR lengths during differentiation enabling a fine-tuned transcript regulation via small non-coding RNAs. Including these effects in the analyses partially accounts for the observed discrepancies in relative abundance of protein and mRNA.

干细胞分化的转录后调控（post-transcriptional regulation）机制迄今尚未完全阐明。蛋白质水平的变化与对应信使RNA（mRNA）水平的变化并非完全相关，观测到的此类差异可部分通过可变聚腺苷酸化（alternative polyadenylation）等转录后调控机制加以解释。这类机制涉及蛋白质结合、转录本使用、微小RNA（miRNAs）及其他非编码RNA的变化。本研究分析了成脂分化（adipogenic differentiation）过程中可变转录本的分布特征，以及微小RNA在转录后调控中的潜在作用。我们的计算机模拟分析（in silico analysis）显示，分化过程中3'非翻译区（3'UTR）长度呈现出温和且一致的偏倚特征，可通过小型非编码RNA实现精准的转录本调控。将此类效应纳入分析后，可部分解释蛋白质与mRNA相对丰度间的观测差异。