Regulatory roles of natural antisense transcripts

Top Cited Papers
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Natural antisense transcripts are frequently functional and are involved in regulating gene expression. The authors summarize the proposed actions of antisense transcript into four models, each corresponding to a putative regulatory mechanism for a subset of antisense transcripts. Mammalian genomes encode numerous natural antisense transcripts, but the function of these transcripts is not well understood. Functional validation studies indicate that antisense transcripts are not a uniform group of regulatory RNAs but instead belong to multiple categories with some common features. Recent evidence indicates that antisense transcripts are frequently functional and use diverse transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene regulatory mechanisms to carry out a wide variety of biological roles.