In silico prediction and experimental validation of natural antisense transcripts in two cancer-associated regions of human chromosome 6

Antisense transcription has long been recognized as a mechanism involved in the regulation of gene expression. Therefore, several human diseases associated with abnormal patterns of gene expression might display antisense RNA-mediated pathogenetic mechanisms. Such issue could be particularly relevant for cancer pathogenesis, since deregulated gene expression has long been established as a hallmark of cancer cells. Herein, we report on a bioinformatic search for antisense transcription in two cancer-associated regions of human chromosome 6 (6q21 and 6q27). Natural antisense transcripts (NATs) for several genes in both genomic regions were predicted in silico and subsequently validated by strand-specific RT-PCR. Detailed experimental validation by quantitative real-time RT-PCR of five putative cancer related sense-antisense transcript pairs revealed a single candidate tumor suppressor gene (RPS6KA2) whose expression levels display marked cancer-related changes that are likely mediated by its antisense RNA in a breast cancer cell line model.