Journal
NATURE
Volume 466, Issue 7306, Pages 642-646Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nature09190
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Funding
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- NIH [GM079756, MH60774]
- American Cancer Society [RSG0905401]
- Comunidad de Madrid
- European Union [Exp. 11/2009]
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Small (<200 nucleotide) RNA (sRNA) profiling of human cells using various technologies demonstrates unexpected complexity of sRNAs with hundreds of thousands of sRNA species present(1-4). Genetic and in vitro studies show that these RNAs are not merely degradation products of longer transcripts but could indeed have a function(1,2,5). Furthermore, profiling of RNAs, including the sRNAs, can reveal not only novel transcripts, but also make clear predictions about the existence and properties of novel biochemical pathways operating in a cell. For example, sRNA profiling in human cells indicated the existence of an unknown capping mechanism operating on cleaved RNA(2), a biochemical component of which was later identified(6). Here we show that human cells contain a novel type of sRNA that has non-genomically encoded 5' poly(U) tails. The presence of these RNAs at the termini of genes, specifically at the very 3' ends of known mRNAs, strongly argues for the presence of a yet uncharacterized endogenous biochemical pathway in cells that can copy RNA. We show that this pathway can operate on multiple genes, with specific enrichment towards transcript-encoding components of the translational machinery. Finally, we show that genes are also flanked by sense, 3' polyadenylated sRNAs that are likely to be capped.
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