Institute for Genomics and Integrative Biology, CSIR, New Delhi, India.
RNA Biol. 2012 Jan;9(1):81-6. doi: 10.4161/rna.9.1.18047. Epub 2012 Jan 1.
DNA G-quadruplexes are known as modulators of transcription. More recently G-quadruplexes, located in the untranslated regions of the mRNA of protein coding genes, have been described to negatively regulate gene expression at the post transcriptional/ translational levels. Here we describe the possibility of the existence of G-quadruplexes in non-coding RNA (ncRNA) and discuss their potential biological roles. Using an in house prediction tool (Quadfinder) we observe a significant occurrence and distribution of G-quadruplexes in ncRNA of various sizes. We also observe that most of non-coding RNAs harboring these potential quadruplex motifs peak at the sizes ranging from 200-300 bases. More importantly we report enrichment for single and dinucleotide loops indicating a degree of high stability of these G-quadruplexes and their potential functions in vivo. Subsequent in vitro analyses of a subset of these sequences were performed which support our predictions.
DNA 四链体被认为是转录的调节剂。最近，位于蛋白质编码基因 mRNA 的非翻译区的四链体已被描述为在转录后/翻译水平负调控基因表达。在这里，我们描述了非编码 RNA (ncRNA) 中四链体存在的可能性，并讨论了它们潜在的生物学作用。使用内部预测工具（Quadfinder），我们观察到在各种大小的 ncRNA 中存在大量的四链体分布。我们还观察到，大多数含有这些潜在四联体模体的非编码 RNA 的峰值大小在 200-300 个碱基之间。更重要的是，我们报告了单核苷酸和二核苷酸环的富集，表明这些 G-四链体具有一定的高度稳定性，以及它们在体内的潜在功能。对其中一些序列进行的后续体外分析支持了我们的预测。
