McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Genes (Basel). 2012 Sep;3(3):344-60. doi: 10.3390/genes3030344.
Despite recent technological advances, the study of the human transcriptome is still in its early stages. Here we provide an overview of the complex human transcriptomic landscape, present the bioinformatics challenges posed by the vast quantities of transcriptomic data, and discuss some of the studies that have tried to determine how much of the human genome is transcribed. Recent evidence has suggested that more than 90% of the human genome is transcribed into RNA. However, this view has been strongly contested by groups of scientists who argued that many of the observed transcripts are simply the result of transcriptional noise. In this review, we conclude that the full extent of transcription remains an open question that will not be fully addressed until we decipher the complete range and biological diversity of the transcribed genomic sequences.
尽管最近取得了技术进步，但人类转录组的研究仍处于早期阶段。在这里，我们提供了对复杂人类转录组景观的概述，介绍了大量转录组数据带来的生物信息学挑战，并讨论了一些试图确定人类基因组有多少部分被转录的研究。最近的证据表明，超过 90%的人类基因组被转录成 RNA。然而，这种观点受到了一些科学家的强烈质疑，他们认为许多观察到的转录本只是转录噪声的结果。在这篇综述中，我们的结论是，转录的全部程度仍然是一个悬而未决的问题，只有当我们破译出转录基因组序列的完整范围和生物多样性时，这个问题才能得到完全解决。
