Although repetitive elements pervade mammalian genomes, their overall contribution to transcriptional activity is poorly defined. Here, as part of the FANTOM4 project, we report that 6-30% of cap-selected mouse and human RNA transcripts initiate within repetitive elements. Analysis of approximately 250,000 retrotransposon-derived transcription start sites shows that the associated transcripts are generally tissue specific, coincide with gene-dense regions and form pronounced clusters when aligned to full-length retrotransposon sequences. Retrotransposons located immediately 5' of protein-coding loci frequently function as alternative promoters and/or express noncoding RNAs. More than a quarter of RefSeqs possess a retrotransposon in their 3' UTR, with strong evidence for the reduced expression of these transcripts relative to retrotransposon-free transcripts. Finally, a genome-wide screen identifies 23,000 candidate regulatory regions derived from retrotransposons, in addition to more than 2,000 examples of bidirectional transcription. We conclude that retrotransposon transcription has a key influence upon the transcriptional output of the mammalian genome.

Securin inhibits the proteolytic activity of separase in a 2-fold manner. While inhibiting separase, securin is able to promote nuclear accumulation of separase and help separase to become fully activated after securin's own destruction at anaphase onset.

Large-scale sequencing projects have revealed an unexpected complexity in the origins, structures and functions of mammalian transcripts. Many loci are known to produce overlapping coding and non-coding RNAs with capped 5′ ends that vary in size. Methods that identify the 5′ ends of transcripts will facilitate the discovery of novel promoters and 5′ ends derived from secondary capping events. Such methods often require high input amounts of RNA not obtainable from highly refined samples such as tissue microdissections and subcellular fractions. Therefore, we have developed nanoCAGE (Cap Analysis of Gene Expression), a method that captures the 5′ ends of transcripts from as little as 10 nanograms of total RNA and CAGEscan, a mate-pair adaptation of nanoCAGE that captures the transcript 5′ ends linked to a downstream region. Both of these methods allow further annotation-agnostic studies of the complex human transcriptome.