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Mrs.Brie Zee.2U

What's the longest transcript known?

Craig Lenhard  Follow

Top 10 long processed transcripts in humans (with multiple isoforms), from gencode 19 annotations:

Transcript    Length(bases)------------------------TTN-018        108861     <-- TitinTTN-019        103988      TTN-002        101206     KCNQ1OT1-001    91666TTN-201         82413TTN-202         82212TTN-003         81838MUC16-001       43732TSIX-001        37026MCC-009         29616

Ignoring isoforms (only longest isoforms shown)

Transcript    Length(bases)------------------------TTN-018         108861KCNQ1OT1-001     91666MUC16-001        43732TSIX-001         37026MCC-009          29616TRAPPC9-015      29514SYNE1-001        27602GRIN2B-001       27204OBSCN-011        26811NEB-204          26020

Titin clearly is the longest transcript in humans

However this is the list of longest genes:

Gene           Length(Kb)-------------------------CNTNAP2        2304.64LSAMP          2186.93DLG2           2169.35DMD            2092.29PTPRD          2084.57MACROD2        2057.83CSMD1          2056.87EYS            1987.24LRP1B          1900.28PCDH15         1806.76CTNNA3         1783.65ROBO2          1740.82RBFOX1         1691.87NRXN3          1619.64DAB1           1548.83RP11-420N3.2   1536.21PDE4D          1513.42FHIT           1502.09AGBL4          1491.06CCSER1         1474.33

Top 5 in Zebrafish (Zv9.75); longest isoforms:

ttna-203             93727   <-- Titinttnb-202             82632si:dkey-16p6.1-001   67263syne2b-201           31867si:dkey-30j22.1-001  29269

Top 5 in Drosophila (FlyBase r6.02); longest isoforms:

dp-RQ           71300   <-- Dumpysls-RP          56448   <-- TitinMuc14A-RA       48719Msp300-RG       43105Ank2-RU         42107

Top 5 in C.elegans (WormBase WS220); longest isoforms:

W06H8.8g        55623   <-- TitinK07E12.1a.2     39257   <-- dig-1ZK973.6         25608C09D1.1b        24198C41A3.1         23457

Top 5 in Arabidopsis (TAIR 10.23):

AT1G67120.1     16272   <-- Midasin homologAT3G02260.1     15451   <-- Calossin-like proteinAT5G28263.1     15194AT1G43060.1     14622AT5G30269.1     14590

Top 5 in yeast (SGD):

YLR106C         14733   <-- MidasinQ0045           12884   <-- Subunit I of cytochrome c oxidaseYKR054C         12279YHR099W         11235YDR457W          9807

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Geoff Smith  Follow
It seems that Titin is on the top of the list in many species. Interesting.More
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Daniel Cook  Follow

I think a good candidate is the human titin gene. The gene itself has 363 exons, depending on the isoform it has between 27.000 and 34.000 residues. This makes up a processed mRNA length of up to 100kb for the full length isoform. See either the Wikipedia article or the one linked below for more details:

If you are looking for the longest primary transcript, then the human dystrophin gene should be your favorite. It has a length of about 2.4 Megabases for the primary transcript, the processed transcript has only a length of about 14kb. It takes about 16 hours to transcribe and co-transcriptionally splice the sequence. See here for more details:

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Greg Tatar  Follow
why does it transcribe 2.4 million bases and cut it down to 14,000? Seems like a waste of time and energy, not to mention the potential for mutations, which if muscular dystrophy is any clue, would be deadly.More
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Jona Arkenson  Follow
I don't have a reference for this, but I was told by a professor once that a long developmental gene is Drosophila takes longer to transcribe than the length of the cell cycle during initial development so that is not actually expressed until the cell cycle lengthens later in development. That's perhaps one answer (if uncommon) to the question of why some genes are so long.More
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Helvi M Ndongo-Nuugulu  Follow
alternative splicing is a wierd thing to be sure. biology is not rational but then human science has not yet produced a living cell from first principles...More
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Gerald Arnoult  Follow
Cases like this make me wonder why alternative splicing would be worth it. If you divide 2.4 million bases by 14000 bases you get 171.4. Seems like you could just make multiple copies of dystrophin to cover all the isoforms and still save space, and only need to transcribe the copy you want. Evolution should have gotten an engineering degree.More
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