Non-coding transcripts play an important role in gene expression regulation in all species, including budding and fission yeast. Such regulatory transcripts include intergenic ncRNA (non-coding RNA), 5' and 3' UTRs, introns and antisense transcripts. In the present review, we discuss advantages and limitations of recently developed sequencing techniques, such as ESTs, DNA microarrays, RNA-Seq (RNA sequencing), DRS (direct RNA sequencing) and TIF-Seq (transcript isoform sequencing). We provide an overview of methods applied in yeast and how each of them has contributed to our knowledge of gene expression regulation and transcription.