Polyadenylation of pre-mRNAs, a critical step in eukaryotic gene expression, is 
mediated by cis elements collectively called the polyadenylation signal. 
Genome-wide analysis of such polyadenylation signals was missing in fission 
yeast, even though it is an important model organism. We demonstrate that the 
canonical AATAAA motif is the most frequent and functional polyadenylation 
signal in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Using analysis of RNA-Seq data sets from 
cells grown under various physiological conditions, we identify 3' UTRs for 
nearly 90% of the yeast genes. Heterogeneity of cleavage sites is common, as is 
alternative polyadenylation within and between conditions. We validated the 
computationally identified sequence elements likely to promote polyadenylation 
by functional assays, including qRT-PCR and 3'RACE analysis. The biological 
importance of the AATAAA motif is underlined by functional analysis of the genes 
containing it. Furthermore, it has been shown that convergent genes require 
trans elements, like cohesin for efficient transcription termination. Here we 
show that convergent genes lacking cohesin (on chromosome 2) are generally 
associated with longer overlapping mRNA transcripts. Our bioinformatic and 
experimental genome-wide results are summarized and can be accessed and 
customized in a user-friendly database Pomb(A).