Alternative polyadenylation study: Effects of polymorphisms in RNA's c/s elements and antisense transcriptsCleavage and polyadenylation are essential processes involved in mRNA formation, establishing 3' end and assuring mRNA stability, its cytoplasmic location and translation. The sequence elements in 3'UTR play a crucial role in the regulation of gene expression and translation.The stability of mRNAs is altered in cancer. Genetic alterations seen in severas types of cancer can disrupt the regulation of expression leveis of mutated More than 7000 human genes have alternative polyadenylation sites and site choice depends on the tissue in which it is expressed, cell cycle or exogenous factors that may influence the regulation of gene expression.We evaluated the relative occurrence of polyadenylation signals in several types of transcripts and variants. The canonical signals AATAAA and ATTAAA are the most frequent, occurring in 46% and 15% respectively, in human reference transcripts,in all genes.Among genes with alternative polyadenylation events, signal proportion is similar, nonetheless these is no signal in 20% of shorter variants against 1 1% of longervariants.While studying alternative polyadenylation one should also take care about cleavage sites downstream regions, which have an important role in the assembly of the polyadenylation machinery. So forth we came up with a score ín order to estimate the binding strength of CstF protein to the downstream region.We have seen that among alternative polyadenylated genes, canonical signals are more affected by SNPs in shorter than in longer variants.In this work we analyzed the existence of shorter and longer transcripts in a breast cancer cell culture transcriptome of HCC1954 and we also shown it is possible to differentiate polyadenylatíon variants through microarray probes. mRNA Keywords Transcriptome Polyadenylation Gene expression 3'UTR SNPs Cancer Microarray B B Agradecimentos Gostaria de agradecer à minha avó e aos meus país por todo o apoio que me deram, durante todos esses anos. Tenho certeza que sem esse suporte. em todos os aspectos possíveis, a execução desta tese não teria sido possível. Obrigada por todo o carinho, amor, atenção, respeito, abrigo e patrocínio. Agradeço ao Dr. Sandro por me receber de imediato como aluna em seu laboratório, por acreditar na minha capacidade e independência. Gostaria de agradecer a Profa Dra Suely Made e toda a equipe de seu laboratório, na faculdade de Medicina da USP, pelos dados de microarray da Codelink, e pela colaboração na interpretação dos dados e dos resultados.Agradeço a meus colegas de laboratório, pelas diversas discussões científicas, apoio e ensinamentos. Agradeço pela paciência que todos tiveram ao início de meu doutorado, ao me ensinar inúmeras coisas sobre biologia, computação e sobre a própria pós-graduação.A Capes pelo suporte financeiro.Ao instituto Ludwig pelo acolhimento e suporte tecnológico.As secretárias Patrícia, Ana Cláudia, Renata e Elíane, pela eficiência e pela ajuda com as questões burocrát...