Antisense transcription in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

A large number of antisense transcripts have been detected in diverse microbial genomes and considerable effort has been devoted to elucidating the functional role of antisense transcription. In this study, we reanalysed extensive RNA sequencing data from the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa and found that the majority of genes have a propensity for antisense transcription. Although antisense transcripts were found in more than 80 % of the genes of the P. aeruginosa genome, the majority of sequencing reads were mapping sense and only a minority (<2 %) were mapping antisense to genes. Similarly to the sense expression levels, the antisense expression levels varied under different environmental conditions, with the sense and antisense expression levels often being inversely regulated and modulated by the activity of alternative sigma factors. Environment-modulated antisense transcription showed a bias towards being antisense to genes within regions of genomic plasticity and to those encoding small regulatory RNAs. In the future, the validation and functional characterization of antisense transcripts, and novel transcripts that are antisense to small regulatory RNAs in particular, have the potential to contribute to our understanding of the various levels of transcriptional regulation and its dynamics in the bacterial pathogen P. aeruginosa.