Gene Expression Level and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis of Host Genes

Genome-wide analysis has shown that there are non-protein-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) that are localized on intronic regions of protein-coding genes. The intronic ncRNAs are hosted in introns of protein-coding genes that are referred to as host genes. Our previous study reported genomic features of intronic ncRNA genes and host genes. However, transcriptomic features of host genes have not been investigated. Here we report gene expression level analysis of host genes and investigate biological functions of host genes. Our results showed that gene expression levels of host genes tend to be higher than those of non-host genes. Host genes orthologous between human and mouse have more conserved expression levels than non-host orthologous genes. And host genes with high expression levels involve nervous system, gene expression, protein modification and cytoskeleton whereas there were mostly no enriched biological functions in host genes with low expression levels. These results suggest that host genes have characteristic transcript quantification and biological functions. The characteristics may be useful for further analysis of regulatory ways of host gene expression.