GN Ramachandran Knowledge Center for Genome Informatics, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Delhi, India.
Front Genet. 2013 Jan 9;3:308. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2012.00308. eCollection 2012.
Long non-coding RNA have emerged as an increasingly well studied subset of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) following their recent discovery in a number of organisms including humans and characterization of their functional and regulatory roles in variety of distinct cellular mechanisms. The recent annotations of long ncRNAs in humans peg their numbers as similar to protein-coding genes. However, despite the rapid advancements in the field the functional characterization and biological roles of most of the long ncRNAs still remain unidentified, although some candidate long ncRNAs have been extensively studied for their roles in cancers and biological phenomena such as X-inactivation and epigenetic regulation of genes. A number of recent reports suggest an exciting possibility of long ncRNAs mediating host response and immune function, suggesting an elaborate network of regulatory interactions mediated through ncRNAs in infection. The present role of long ncRNAs in host-pathogen cross talk is limited to a handful of mechanistically distinct examples. The current commentary chronicles the findings of these reports on the role of long ncRNAs in infection biology and further highlights the bottlenecks and future directions toward understanding the biological significance of the role of long ncRNAs in infection biology.
长非编码 RNA 是近年来在包括人类在内的多种生物体中发现的非编码 RNA（ncRNA）的一个亚类，其功能和调节作用在多种不同的细胞机制中得到了广泛的研究，因此成为了一个研究热点。最近在人类中对长非编码 RNA 的注释表明，其数量与蛋白质编码基因相似。然而，尽管该领域取得了快速进展，但大多数长非编码 RNA 的功能特征和生物学作用仍然未知，尽管一些候选长非编码 RNA 因其在癌症和生物学现象（如 X 染色体失活和基因的表观遗传调控）中的作用而得到了广泛研究。最近的一些报告表明，长非编码 RNA 可能介导宿主反应和免疫功能，这表明在感染过程中通过 ncRNA 介导了一个复杂的调控相互作用网络。目前长非编码 RNA 在宿主-病原体相互作用中的作用仅限于少数具有不同机制的例子。本评论综述了这些报告中关于长非编码 RNA 在感染生物学中的作用的发现，并进一步强调了理解长非编码 RNA 在感染生物学中的生物学意义的瓶颈和未来方向。
