Center for Prostate Disease Research, Department of Surgery, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Maryland, USA.
Asian J Androl. 2014 May-Jun;16(3):418-9. doi: 10.4103/1008-682X.126398.
Remarkable progress has been made in molecular characterization of prostate cancer (PCa) with continued innovations in high throughput technologies evaluating human cancer. Since the completion of the Human Genome Project it has been estimated that only about 1.5%–2% of our genome codes for proteins. Various genome-wide approaches, e.g. the ENCODE project, revealed that a much larger percent of the genome is transcribed as non-protein coding (nc) RNA, including long noncoding (lnc) RNA (over 200 bps long). Although the biological roles of lncRNA (the ‘dark matter of the genome’) are not nearly as well-understood as the protein coding mRNAs, it is increasingly clear that they play important roles in almost every aspects of biology, including cancer biology. This is exemplified by recent genome-wide association studies revealing that over 80% of cancer-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are in noncoding regions of the genome.
在高通量技术评估人类癌症方面取得了显著进展，对前列腺癌（PCa）的分子特征进行了深入研究。自人类基因组计划完成以来，据估计，我们的基因组中只有约 1.5%–2%的基因编码蛋白质。各种全基因组方法，如 ENCODE 项目，揭示了基因组的转录本中有很大一部分是非蛋白编码（nc）RNA，包括长非编码（lnc）RNA（超过 200 个碱基对长）。虽然 lncRNA（基因组的“暗物质”）的生物学功能远不如蛋白编码的 mRNA 那么明确，但越来越清楚的是，它们在生物学的几乎各个方面都发挥着重要作用，包括癌症生物学。最近的全基因组关联研究证实了这一点，研究发现超过 80%的与癌症相关的单核苷酸多态性（SNP）位于基因组的非编码区域。
