Johnsson Per, Morris Kevin V, Grandér Dan
Department of Oncology and Pathology, Cancer Center Karolinska R8:03, Karolinska Institutet, 171 76, Stockholm, Sweden,
Methods Mol Biol. 2014;1167:213-26. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-0835-6_14.
While long thought to represent only "junk" DNA, several recent studies support a functional role for pseudogenes. Several hundreds of pseudogenes have been reported as transcribed into RNA in a large variety of tissues and tumors. Most studies have focused on pseudogenes expressed in the sense direction, but some reports suggest that pseudogenes can be also transcribed as antisense RNAs (asRNAs). A few examples of key regulatory genes, such as PTEN and OCT4, have in fact been reported to be under the regulation of pseudogene-expressed asRNAs. Here, we review what is known about pseudogene-expressed asRNAs and we discuss the functional role that these transcripts may have in gene regulation. Finally, we discuss some technical challenges when characterising the function of pseudogene asRNAs.
虽然长期以来人们一直认为假基因仅代表“垃圾”DNA，但最近的几项研究支持了假基因的功能作用。据报道，数百个假基因在多种组织和肿瘤中被转录为RNA。大多数研究集中在正义方向表达的假基因上，但一些报告表明，假基因也可以转录为反义RNA（asRNA）。事实上，已经报道了一些关键调控基因的例子，如PTEN和OCT4，它们受假基因表达的asRNA调控。在这里，我们综述了关于假基因表达的asRNA的已知信息，并讨论了这些转录本在基因调控中可能具有的功能作用。最后，我们讨论了在表征假基因asRNA功能时的一些技术挑战。
