Research resource: RNA-Seq reveals unique features of the pancreatic β-cell transcriptome

The pancreatic β-cell is critical for the maintenance of glycemic control. Knowing the compendium of genes expressed in β-cells will further our understanding of this critical cell type and may allow the identification of future antidiabetes drug targets. Here, we report the use of next-generation sequencing to obtain nearly 1 billion reads from the polyadenylated RNA of islets and purified β-cells from mice. These data reveal novel examples of β-cell-specific splicing events, promoter usage, and over 1000 long intergenic noncoding RNA expressed in mouse β-cells. Many of these long intergenic noncoding RNA are β-cell specific, and we hypothesize that this large set of novel RNA may play important roles in β-cell function. Our data demonstrate unique features of the β-cell transcriptome.