PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Óscar García Blay
AU  - Pieter Verhagen
AU  - Benjamin Martin
AU  - Maike M.K. Hansen
TI  - RNA degradation heavily impacts mRNA co-expression
AID  - 10.1101/2022.09.21.508820
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.09.21.508820
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/09/22/2022.09.21.508820.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/09/22/2022.09.21.508820.full
AB  - Co-expression of genes measured with single-cell RNA sequencing is extensively utilized to understand the principles of gene regulation within and across cell types and species. It is assumed that the presence of correlation in gene expression values at the single-cell level demonstrates the existence of common regulatory mechanisms. However, the regulatory mechanisms that should lead to observed co-expression at an mRNA level often remain unexplored. Here we investigate the relationship between processes upstream and downstream of transcription (i.e., promoter architecture and coordination, DNA contact frequencies and mRNA degradation) and pairwise gene expression correlations at an mRNA level. We identify that differences in mRNA degradation (i.e., half-life) is a pivotal source of single-cell correlations in mRNA levels independently of the presence of common regulatory mechanisms. These findings reinforce the necessity of including post-transcriptional regulation mechanisms in the analysis of gene expression in mammalian cells.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.