Identification of 4,370 expressed sequence tags from a 3'-end-specific cDNA library of human skeletal muscle by DNA sequencing and filter hybridization.

A systematic study on the mRNA species expressed in the human skeletal muscle is presented in this paper. To carry on this study, a new method has been developed for the construction of unbiased cDNA libraries specially designed for the production of ESTs corresponding to the 3'-end portion of the mRNAs. The method has been applied to human skeletal muscle, where the analysis of the transcription profile is particularly difficult for the presence of several very abundant transcripts. To detect and quantify high-level mRNAs, the first 1054 ESTs were obtained from randomly selected clones. The 10 most abundant transcripts accounted for > 45% of the clones. Subsequently, these transcripts were identified by filter hybridization, thus making DNA sequencing more productive. Overall, 4370 clones were identified: 3372 by DNA sequencing and 998 by filter hybridization. The number of groups of sequences identifying individual transcripts was relatively low compared with other tissues, resulting in a total of 934 groups out of 4370 ESTs. Of these, 719 groups were represented by only one sequence.