The edited transcriptome: novel high throughput approaches to detect nucleotide deamination

Abstract

RNA editing is emerging as a wide-spread phenomenon both in coding and non-coding RNA regions. While the mechanisms underlying many of these post-transcriptional modifications have not been elucidated, RNA editing by nucleotide deamination has been known for over two decades as a mechanism to generate base substitutions. With the recently growing use of high throughput sequencing technologies, knowledge about the frequency and diversity of RNA nucleotide substitutions has vastly increased. In this review we will highlight recent findings within this field, and illustrate how novel technologies have made it possible to detect and measure the efficiency of editing in an unprecedented accuracy and robustness. Future prospects for the detection of important transcriptome variations will also be discussed.