Long noncoding RNAs: functional surprises from the RNA world.

By J. Wilusz, Hongjae Sunwoo, David L. Spector. Genes & Development, 2009

2,283 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Most of the eukaryotic genome is transcribed, yielding a complex network of transcripts that includes tens of thousands of long noncoding RNAs with little or no protein-coding capacity. Although the vast majority of long noncoding RNAs have yet to be characterized thoroughly, many of these transcripts are unlikely to represent transcriptional "noise" as a significant number have been shown to exhibit cell type-specific expression, localization to subcellular compartments, and association with human diseases. Here, we highlight recent efforts that have identified a myriad of molecular functions for long noncoding RNAs. In some cases, it appears that simply the act of noncoding RNA transcription is sufficient to positively or negatively affect the expression of nearby genes. However, in many cases, the long noncoding RNAs themselves serve key regulatory roles that were assumed previously to be reserved for proteins, such as regulating the activity or localization of proteins and serving as organizational frameworks of subcellular structures. In addition, many long noncoding RNAs are processed to yield small RNAs or, conversely, modulate how other RNAs are processed. It is thus becoming increasingly clear that long noncoding RNAs can function via numerous paradigms and are key regulatory molecules in the cell.

Subfields: Cancer Research, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7889bafc0e9ffdb8dfc32f00ac0bfa54096e29b3

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Citations in the corpus

Molecular Interplay of the Non-coding RNA ANRIL and Methylated Histone H3 Lysine 27 by Polycomb CBX7 in Transcriptional Silencing of INK4a (2010, positive): “This argues that the contextual specific binding of CBX7 to ANRIL we observed, which may be manifested through RNA structure-mediated interactions with the CBX chromodomain, is likely dictated by other subunits of CBX7/PRC1 capable of binding RNA or even other RNA-binding proteins, which together pr”
Long noncoding RNA high expression in hepatocellular carcinoma facilitates tumor growth through enhancer of zeste homolog 2 in humans (2011, background): “transcripts that have structural, regulatory, or unknown functions.(4) Although studies of small noncoding RNAs (18-200 nucleotides [nt]) have dominated the field of RNA biology in recent years,(5,6) a surprisingly wide array of cellular functions has also been associated with long noncoding RNAs (l”
The functional role of long non-coding RNA in human carcinomas (2011, background): “Although initially argued to be spurious transcriptional noise, recent evidence suggests that the proverbial “dark matter” of the genome may play a major biological role in cellular development and metabolism [11-17].”
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Long Noncoding RNA MALAT1 Regulates Endothelial Cell Function and Vessel Growth (2014, background): “Noncoding RNAs can be divided in small (<200 nt) noncoding RNAs, which include microRNAs and transfer RNAs, and longer RNAs (>200 nt) include ribosomal RNAs and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs).(1,2) Although microRNAs are shown to play important roles in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene exp”
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