Ana Conesa, Coordinator of LongTREC and CSIC researcher at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio, CSIC-UV), was interviewed by Ángel Rodríguez Lozano on Hablando con Científicos, the science podcast of CienciaEs, in an episode titled “El transcriptoma y su lectura” (The transcriptome and how to read it).
In this engaging conversation (in Spanish), Ana explores the world of the transcriptome, the complete set of RNA molecules that carry the instructions of our genes through the cell, and explains why reading it is so challenging. She compares short-read methods, which chop RNA into small pieces that must later be reassembled computationally, with long-read RNA sequencing, which captures much longer molecules and offers greater precision in identifying and quantifying transcripts.
From a global consortium to Nature Methods
Ana also discusses the work of the Long-read RNA-Seq Genome Annotation Assessment Project (LRGASP) consortium, published in Nature Methods as “Systematic assessment of long-read RNA-seq methods for transcript identification and quantification”. The consortium generated more than 427 million long reads from cDNA and direct RNA datasets of human, mouse and manatee. The study showed that libraries with longer, more accurate reads produce more accurate transcripts than those with greater read depth, while greater depth improves quantification accuracy. It also found that the choice of analysis tool strongly influences the results and that annotating novel transcripts remains a challenge, which highlights the need to keep developing long-read tools, a mission close to the heart of the LongTREC community.
🎧 Listen to the full interview here: https://cienciaes.com/entrevistas/2024/07/07/transcriptoma/
📖 Read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-024-02298-3
