Investigating the Importance of non-coding transcripts

Background Currently there is little known about what parts of the genome sequence are expressed as mRNA transcripts and whether or not they are functional transcripts The relationship between transcription and conservation is not fully understood. Non-coding RNAs are difficult to identify but are biologically important.

Other studies… suggest that a large fraction of non-coding elements are conserved because of functional constraints the human genome does not account for any non-coding RNAs and addition of these to the gene count would greatly increase the complexity of the human genome non-coding RNAs are becoming a functional class of transcripts important for splicing, nucleolar and ribosomal structures, telomeric sequence addition, transport and insertion of protein into membranes and down regulation of translation.

Purpose The purpose of this project is to identify non- coding RNAs using transcription data. Try to characterize a relationship between conservation and transcription

Methods Using the UCSC Genome Browser I found -conserved non-coding transcripts -not conserved non-coding transcripts by computing a series of intersections. Then excluding the retrotransposons I analyzed the evofold structure predictions of the conserved non-coding transcripts to analyze their possible functions

Results

Results continued… Evofold prediction with a score of 645 found near the FOXP2 gene. FOXP2 gene is thought to be needed for proper development of speech and language regions of the brain during embryogenesis. There is a possibility that this particular non- coding transcript may have some functional contribution in the development of the FOXP2 gene

Conclusions The results I have obtained suggest conserved non-coding genes are most likely transcribed for a functional reason. Non-coding transcripts should not be disregarded because they can have other relevant functions People have discovered non-coding transcripts with important functions and perhaps this is why some of these non-coding sequences are conserved. This begins to answer the question of the relationship of conservation and transcription. Further investigation in this area can lead to the discovery of many new functionally important transcripts that are not currently accounted for in the human genome