Survey of Antisense Transcription.

Citation: Ling, MHT. 2019. Survey of Antisense Transcription. In Guenther, R. and Steel, D. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Volume 3, pages 842-846. Oxford: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-12811-414-8.

Link to [abstract].

In recent years, many antisense transcripts had been discovered. Antisense transcripts are complementary to the coding transcripts, also known as sense transcripts. Duplex formation of sense/antisense transcript has been thought to limit the effective abundance of sense transcripts, leading to reduced levels of translated peptides/proteins. However, recent discoveries show that this is not the case – duplex formation is the first-order effect, which can affect higher-orders; such as, interfere with transcription and translation of sense transcripts, affecting the maturation and half-life of sense transcripts. In this article, 4 cases are examined in depth to illustrate that the effects of antisense transcript on the eventual peptide/protein level can be complex and should be considered on a case-by-case basis.