Differential Analysis of Transcripts with Alternative Splicing (DATAS™) is ExonHit’s proprietary technology and an innovative method for identifying all the functionally distinct messenger RNA (mRNA) variants differentially expressed between any two biologic samples (healthy vs. diseased or cell lines treated by a compound) on a genome-wide basis.

Unlike Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) sequencing, DATAS™ gives access to the entire transcript and splice events that affect the coding sequence.  Bioinformatic analysis of ExonHit’s entire DATAS™ fragment database shows that over 75% of DATAS™ clones sequenced to date, deriving from known genes, overlap the coding sequence of those genes.

ExonHit’s analysis also shows that more than 80% of known genes identified by DATAS™ are homologous with alternatively spliced ESTs, which indicates a significant enrichment over the 60% of alternatively spliced genes detected in the EST databases. By directly targeting alternatively spliced mRNAs, DATAS™ technology goes beyond EST mapping and gene prediction programs to find novel exons in the genomic DNA and delivers splicing events specific to the samples of interest.

DATAS™ technology and certain uses of the alternative splicing events identified through its application are protected under US Pat. No. 6,251,590, European patent EP1,062,364 as well other patents granted and pending worldwide.