Abundant Poly(A)-Bearing RNAs That Lack Open Reading Frames in Schizosaccharomyces pombe

We report here that 6.9% (68/987) of randomly selected cDNA clones from an S. pombe cDNA library lack apparently long open reading frames which we denote prl. One of them, prl1, was examined further because multiple bands were observed when it was used as a probe in northern blot analysis. These multiple bands appear to be derived from overlapping transcripts from both DNA strands, including non-coding RNAs and antisense RNAs in addition to mRNA. Such mechanisms may increase the transcriptional variation in S. pombe cells.