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Two Genes Show Up

Paralee

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
USA
Sometimes when I go to 23andme I pull up and gene and it shows 2, for instance

BDNF-AS, BDNF

Although sometimes there's two entirely two different genes that look nothing alike. Is that because these two overlap? Thanks, Paralee
 

alicec

Senior Member
Messages
1,572
Location
Australia
BDNF-AS, BDNF

These are two separate genes, BDNF antisense, BDNF.

They are related in that the BDNF-AS gene is transcribed from the opposite strand to BDNF in the reverse complimentary direction.

BDNF-AS encodes a long non-coding RNA rather than a protein, which overlaps with part of the coding region of the BDNF mRNA forming a perfect binding pair. This is called a cis-natural antisense transcript.

Binding of the two RNA molecules represses expression of the BDNF gene so the BDNF-AS transcript plays a regulatory role.
 

Paralee

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
USA
@alicec , thank you for that explanation. I see this on genes at times and wondered if I needed to dig further because of two appearing together.
 

Paralee

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
USA
@alicec , I just reread your explanation and looked it up and now I'm wondering if this is a bad thing? Does it happen a lot? Thanks.
 

alicec

Senior Member
Messages
1,572
Location
Australia
I'm wondering if this is a bad thing? Does it happen a lot? Thanks.

It's neither good nor bad - it's just the way it is.

As to the prevalence of these types of non-coding RNA molecules, I'm not sure how much is really known about that. This whole area of regulatory RNA's is still a work in progress.

According to the Wikipedia entry, only about 1/5 of transcription across the human genome is associated with protein coding genes. That leaves potentially a lot of lncRNAs. Other studies suggest, however, that lncRNAs are about 10-fold less in abundance compared with mRNA - ie protein coding RNAs are preferentially expressed.

I think the question of how much of this non-coding transcription is functional and how much is transcriptional noise is not really known.

Here is a recent review.
 

Paralee

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
USA
Thank you again, @alicec . I will try to read your links again, still too far over my head. I'm reading Genetics for Dummies right now (I'm not proud, start at the most beginning you can find:ill:). I might get it the second or 10th time around. Right now dealing with abdomen nightmares.

Before you answered I got to wondering if those were snps that had been turned off during the evolutionary process, but I don't know where I came up with that... Thanks again. That's one more thing not to have to have to worry about.