The relative importance of transcription rate, cryptic transcription and mRNA stability on shaping stress responses in yeast.

It has been recently stated that stress-responding genes in yeast are enriched in cryptic transcripts and that this is the cause of the differences observed between mRNA amount and RNA polymerase occupancy profiles. Other studies have shown that such differences are mainly due to modulation of mRNA stabilities. Here we analyze the relationship between the presence of cryptic transcripts in genes and their stress response profiles. Despite some of the stress-responding gene groups being indeed enriched in specific classes of cryptic transcripts, we found no statistically significant evidence that cryptic transcription is responsible for the differences observed between mRNA and transcription rate profiles.