Diversity and dynamics of the Drosophila

RNA sequencing from Drosophila melanogaster in cultured cell lines, dissected organ systems and underenvironmental perturbations. We found that a small set of mostly neural-specific genes has the potential to encodethousandsoftranscriptseachthroughextensivealternativepromoterusageandRNAsplicing.Themagnitudesofsplicingchangesarelargerbetweentissuesthanbetweendevelopmentalstages,andmostsex-specificsplicingisgonad-specific.Gonads express hundreds of previously unknown coding and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), some of which areantisense to protein-coding genes and produce short regulatory RNAs. Furthermore, previously identified pervasiveintergenic transcription occurs primarily within newly identified introns. The fly transcriptome is substantially morecomplexthanpreviouslyrecognized,withthiscomplexityarisingfromcombinatorialusageofpromoters,splicesitesandpolyadenylation sites.Next-generationRNAsequencing(RNA-seq)haspermittedthemap-pingoftranscribedregionsofthegenomesofavarietyoforganisms