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. 1991 Oct;88(4):1161–1166. doi: 10.1172/JCI115417

Illegitimate transcription. Application to the analysis of truncated transcripts of the dystrophin gene in nonmuscle cultured cells from Duchenne and Becker patients.

J Chelly 1, H Gilgenkrantz 1, J P Hugnot 1, G Hamard 1, M Lambert 1, D Récan 1, S Akli 1, M Cometto 1, A Kahn 1, J C Kaplan 1
PMCID: PMC295575  PMID: 1918370

Abstract

We have previously demonstrated that there is a low level of transcription of tissue-specific genes in every cell type. In this study, we have taken advantage of this phenomenon, called illegitimate transcription, to analyze the muscle-type dystrophin mRNA in easily accessible cells such as lymphoid cells, fibroblasts, and peripheral blood cells from Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophies with known internal gene deletion. The results showed that, in the studied regions surrounding the deletions, processing of truncated transcripts is identical in specific (muscle tissue) and in nonspecific cells (lymphoid cells). In Becker cases with out-of-frame deletions, the already described alternatively spliced species found in muscle samples were also found in nonspecific cells. These results demonstrate that illegitimate transcripts are a bona fide version of tissue-specific mRNA, and that they represent a useful material to investigate the qualitative consequences of gene defects at the mRNA level.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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