Molecular RNA Biology & Cancer Helmholtz-University-Group, German Cancer Research Center DKFZ, D-69120, Heidelberg, Germany; Institute of Pathology, University Hospital Heidelberg, D-69120, Heidelberg, Germany.
Trends Genet. 2014 Apr;30(4):121-3. doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2014.01.004. Epub 2014 Mar 7.
Evolutionary conservation is widely used as an indicator of the functional significance of newly discovered genes. Although the simple search for homology at the nucleotide or amino acid sequence level has proven to be valuable for protein-coding genes, these criteria are too narrow to describe fully the selection process for long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). LncRNA conservation includes four dimensions: the sequence, structure, function, and expression from syntenic loci. Two recently described knockout mouse models for the lincRNAs metastasis associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (Malat1) and HOX antisense intergenic RNA (Hotair) highlight the multifaceted levels of conservation.
进化保守性被广泛用作新发现基因功能重要性的指标。虽然在核苷酸或氨基酸序列水平上简单地搜索同源性已被证明对编码蛋白质的基因有价值，但这些标准过于狭窄，无法完全描述长非编码 RNA（lncRNA）的选择过程。lncRNA 的保守性包括四个方面：从同线性基因座的序列、结构、功能和表达。最近描述的两个 lincRNA 转移相关肺腺癌转录本 1（Malat1）和 HOX 反义基因间 RNA（Hotair）的敲除小鼠模型突出了保守性的多方面水平。
