Abstract

The expression level of a gene is often used as a proxy for determining whether the protein or RNA product is functional in a cell or tissue. Therefore, it is of fundamental importance to understand the global distribution of gene expression levels, and to be able to interpret it mechanistically and functionally. Here we use RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of mouse Th2 cells, coupled with a range of other techniques, to show that all genes can be separated, based on their expression abundance, into two distinct groups: one group comprised of lowly expressed and putatively non-functional mRNAs, and the other of highly expressed mRNAs with active chromatin marks at their promoters. These observations are confirmed in many other microarray and RNA-seq data sets of metazoan cell types.

Details

Title
RNA sequencing reveals two major classes of gene expression levels in metazoan cells
Author
Hebenstreit, Daniel 1 ; Fang, Miaoqing 2 ; Gu, Muxin 1 ; Charoensawan, Varodom 1 ; Alexander van Oudenaarden 3 ; Teichmann, Sarah A 1 

 Structural Studies Division, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK 
 Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA 
 Department of Physics and Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA 
Section
Report
Publication year
2011
Publication date
2011
Publisher
EMBO Press
e-ISSN
17444292
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2058915201
Copyright
© 2011. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.