Chinese researchers describe interactions between competitive endogenous RNAs in four tissues from the rhesus macaque, which they profiled in an effort to better understand gene regulatory roles for non-coding RNA. Using RNA sequencing, the team tracked messenger RNA and long non-coding RNA expression in brain, lung, colon, and liver tissue over time during rhesus development. They then teased apart thousands of competitive endogenous RNA interactions in each of the tissues during development, reasoning that "[a]nalyzing [competitive endogenous RNA] interactions during the development of multiple tissues will provide insights in the regulation of normal development and the dysregulation of key mechanisms during pathogenesis."
A National Cancer Institute-led team takes a look at recurrent large duplications in multiple myeloma tumors and cell lines with the help of array comparative genomic hybridization, mate-pair sequences, cloned sequences, and fluorescence in situ hybridization analyses. In data from eight multiple myeloma cell lines and more than two dozen multiple myeloma tumors, the researchers saw inter-chromosomal rearrangements, such as translocations or inversions, and intra-chromosomal inversions that shared identical sequences neighboring each break point junction. Similar reciprocal rearrangements with long identical sequences also turned up in six of eight tumor types, during their subsequent analyses of 140 additional tumors.
Investigators in the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany report on results from a transcriptomic and proteomic analysis of developing male and female Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes. The team used RNA sequencing and mass spectrometry to follow transcript and protein expression, respectively, in flow cytometry-sorted gametocyte populations, tracing gene expression and protein enrichment in male and female representatives of the developing malaria-causing parasite. The expression data pointed to widespread transcript and translational repression in female gametocytes, for example, along with other potential clues to targeting the developing parasites with drugs or vaccines.