Comparative analysis of the transcriptome across distant species.

Gerstein MB, Rozowsky J, Yan KK, Wang D, Cheng C, Brown JB, Davis CA, Hillier L, Sisu C, Li JJ, Pei B, Harmanci AO, Duff MO, Djebali S, Alexander RP, Alver BH, Auerbach R, Bell K, Bickel PJ, Boeck ME, Boley NP, Booth BW, Cherbas L, Cherbas P, Di C, Dobin A, Drenkow J, Ewing B, Fang G, Fastuca M, Feingold EA, Frankish A, Gao G, Good PJ, Guigo R, Hammonds A, Harrow J, Hoskins RA, Howald C, Hu L, Huang H, Hubbard TJ, Huynh C, Jha S, Kasper D, Kato M, Kaufman TC, Kitchen RR, Ladewig E, Lagarde J, Lai E, Leng J, Lu Z, MacCoss M, May G, McWhirter R, Merrihew G, Miller DM, Mortazavi A, Murad R, Oliver B, Olson S, Park PJ, Pazin MJ, Perrimon N, Pervouchine D, Reinke V, Reymond A, Robinson G, Samsonova A, Saunders GI, Schlesinger F, Sethi A, Slack FJ, Spencer WC, Stoiber MH, Strasbourger P, Tanzer A, Thompson OA, Wan KH, Wang G, Wang H, Watkins KL, Wen J, Wen K, Xue C, Yang L, Yip K, Zaleski C, Zhang Y, Zheng H, Brenner SE, Graveley BR, Celniker SE, Gingeras TR, Waterston R.
Nature. 2014 Aug 28;512(7515):445-8.
Abstract
The transcriptome is the readout of the genome. Identifying common features in it across distant species can reveal fundamental principles. To this end, the ENCODE and modENCODE consortia have generated large amounts of matched RNA-sequencing data for human, worm and fly. Uniform processing and comprehensive annotation of these data allow comparison across metazoan phyla, extending beyond earlier within-phylum transcriptome comparisons and revealing ancient, conserved features. Specifically, we discover co-expression modules shared across animals, many of which are enriched in developmental genes. Moreover, we use expression patterns to align the stages in worm and fly development and find a novel pairing between worm embryo and fly pupae, in addition to the embryo-to-embryo and larvae-to-larvae pairings. Furthermore, we find that the extent of non-canonical, non-coding transcription is similar in each organism, per base pair. Finally, we find in all three organisms that the gene-expression levels, both coding and non-coding, can be quantitatively predicted from chromatin features at the promoter using a 'universal model' based on a single set of organism-independent parameters.

Related data

Available data
RNA annotations
File format
BED
Data summary
TARs refer to the non-canonical transcription in the regions excluding protein-coding exons, annotated ncRNAs and pseudogenes. Listed below are all the TARs locations in the human genome with 90% (relaxed) exon discovery rate threshold, using the chromosome, start and stop (bed format). TARs are called from pooling RNA-Seq reads across all available ENCODE 2 cell-lines. Details of TAR calling are in the supplement of Gerstein et al.
Available data
RNA annotations
File format
BED
Data summary
TARs refer to the non-canonical transcription in the regions excluding protein-coding exons, annotated ncRNAs and pseudogenes. Listed below are all the TARs locations in the human genome with 98% (stringent) exon discovery rate threshold, using the chromosome, start and stop (bed format). TARs are called from pooling RNA-Seq reads across all available ENCODE 2 cell-lines. Details of TAR calling are in the supplement of Gerstein et al.