Natural antisense transcripts are endogenous transcripts that are complementary to the sense-strand of DNA. These transcripts have been identified in various eukaryotic species and are involved in a broad range of regulatory events and biological processes. However, their general biological functions, expression characteristics and regulatory mechanisms are still unclear. In this study, 497 liv...

We have extended the study of the effects of antisense oligodeoxynucleotides on hematopoietic colony formation to include the effects of antisense to granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), and macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF) on bone marrow cultures. GM-CSF antisense and GM-CSF receptor antisense cause an increase in...

Antisense transcription is widespread in genomes. Despite large differences in gene size and architecture, we find that yeast and human genes share a unique, antisense transcription-associated chromatin signature. We asked whether this signature is related to a biological function for antisense transcription. Using quantitative RNA-FISH, we observed changes in sense transcript distributions in ...

Protein synthesis (translation) stops at stop codons, codons not complemented by tRNA anticodons. tRNAs matching stops, antitermination (Ter) tRNAs, prevent translational termination, producing dysfunctional proteins. Genomes avoid tRNAs with anticodons whose complement (the anticodon of the 'antisense' tRNA) matches stops. This suggests that antisense tRNAs, which also form cloverleaves, are o...

The use of antisense oligonucleotides as therapeutic agents has generated considerable enthusiasm in the research and medical community. Antisense oligonucleotides as therapeutic agents were proposed as far back as in the 1970s when the antisense strategy was initially developed. Nonetheless, it has taken almost a quarter of a century for this potential to be realized. The principle of antisens...

A large number of plant genes are aligned with partially overlapping genes in antisense orientation. Transcription of both genes would therefore favour the formation of double-stranded RNA, providing a substrate for the RNAi machinery, and enhanced antisense transcription should therefore reduce sense transcript levels. We have identified a gene pair that resembles a model for antisense-based g...

There is a potential role for antisense oligonucleotides in the treatment of disease. The principle of antisense technology is the sequence-specific binding of an antisense oligonucleotide to target mRNA, resulting in the prevention of gene translation. The specificity of hybridisation makes antisense treatment an attractive strategy to selectively modulate the expression of genes involved in t...

The recent identification of antisense RNA in the transcriptomes of many eukaryotes has generated enormous interest. The presence of antisense RNA in Plasmodium falciparum, the causative agent of severe malaria, remains controversial. Elucidation of the mechanism of antisense RNA in P. falciparum synthesis is critical in order to demonstrate the origin and function of these transcripts. Therefo...

Antisense transcription, or transcription on the opposite strand of the same genomic locus as another transcript, has been observed in many organisms, including yeast. Several antisense transcripts are known to be conserved across various species of yeast, and a few antisense transcripts are associated with functional regulation of the sense transcript. We detect antisense transcription from ap...

Natural antisense transcripts are reported from all kingdoms of life and several recent reports of genomewide screens indicate that they are widely distributed. These transcripts seem to be involved in various biological functions and may govern the expression of their respective sense partner. Very little, however, is known about the degree of evolutionary conservation of antisense transcripts...