Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology 2000
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington USA
July 2000

Name: Kowalczuk, Maria
Mailing Address: Institute of Microbiology, The University of Wroclaw, Przybyszewskiego 63, Wroclaw, 54-148, Poland
Email Address: kowal@angband.microb.uni.wroc.pl
Phone & FAX numbers: 48 71 32 47 303 & 48 71 32 52 151

#050

Thousands of noncoding ORFs in the yeast genome.
Maria Kowalczuk (1), Pawel Mackiewicz (1), Agnieszka Gierlik (1), Dorota Szczepanik (1), Aleksandra Nowicka (1), Miroslaw R. Dudek (2), Stanislaw Cebrat (1)
(1) Institute of Microbiology, The University of Wroclaw, Przybyszewskiego 63, Wroclaw, 54-148, Poland; (2) Institute of Theoretical Physics, The Univeristy of Wroclaw, pl. Maxa Borna 9, 50-204 Wroclaw, Poland, mdudek@mirek.ift.uni.wroc.pl

Coding sequences have the ability to generate long Open Reading Frames in their antisense strand. Later such overlapping ORFs may be duplicated and translocated to other regions of the genome. Such noncoding, antisense pseudogenes are not subject to selection. They may accumulate mutations and diverge very quickly. If they are not drastically shortened, they may be mistaken for coding sequences, because the probability of spontaneous generation of such long ORFs is very low. By measuring coding/noncoding DNA strand asymmetry, we have found that there are about 2500 antisense ORFs longer than 100 codons in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome. They have the properties of the antisense of known protein coding genes and most probably do not code for proteins. About 1000 are still present in data bases. It means that the total number of protein coding ORFs longer than 100 codons does not exceed 4800. This number is very well correlated with the results of experimental research of the yeast genome, e.g. the total number of transcripts assigned to ORFs.

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