Single-molecule, full-length transcript isoform sequencing reveals disease mutation-associated RNA isoforms in cardiomyocytes

Alternative splicing generates differing RNA isoforms that govern phenotypic complexity of eukaryotes. Its malfunction underlies many diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Comparative analysis of RNA isoforms at the genome-wide scale has been difficult. Here, we established an experimental and computational pipeline that performs de novo transcript annotation and accurately quantifies transcript isoforms from cDNA sequences with a full-length isoform detection accuracy of 97.6%.

We generated a searchable, quantitative human transcriptome annotation with 31,025 known and 5,740 novel transcript isoforms (http://steinmetzlab.embl.de/iBrowser/). By analyzing the isoforms in the presence of RNA Binding Motif Protein 20 (RBM20) mutations associated with aggressive dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), we identified 121 differentially expressed transcript isoforms in 107 cardiac genes. Our approach enables quantitative dissection of complex transcript architecture instead of mere identification of inclusion or exclusion of individual exons, as exemplified by novel IMMT isoforms.

Thereby we achieve a path to direct differential expression testing independent of an existing annotation of transcript isoforms as the functional unit, instead of genes or exons, providing more immediate biological interpretation and higher resolution transcriptome comparisons.