Mallory Allison C, Shkumatava Alena
Institut Curie, 26 Rue d'Ulm, 75248 Paris Cedex 05, France; CNRS UMR3215, 75248 Paris Cedex 05, France; INSERM U934, 75248 Paris Cedex 05, France.
Biochimie. 2015 Oct;117:3-14. doi: 10.1016/j.biochi.2015.03.014. Epub 2015 Mar 24.
Beyond the handful of classic and well-characterized long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), more recently, hundreds of thousands of lncRNAs have been identified in multiple species including bacteria, plants and vertebrates, and the number of newly annotated lncRNAs continues to increase as more transcriptomes are analyzed. In vertebrates, the expression of many lncRNAs is highly regulated, displaying discrete temporal and spatial expression patterns, suggesting roles in a wide range of developmental processes and setting them apart from classic housekeeping ncRNAs. In addition, the deregulation of a subset of these lncRNAs has been linked to the development of several diseases, including cancers, as well as developmental anomalies. However, the majority of vertebrate lncRNA functions remain enigmatic. As such, a major task at hand is to decipher the biological roles of lncRNAs and uncover the regulatory networks upon which they impinge. This review focuses on our emerging understanding of lncRNAs in vertebrate animals, highlighting some recent advances in their functional analyses across several species and emphasizing the current challenges researchers face to characterize lncRNAs and identify their in vivo functions.
除了少数几个经典且特征明确的长链非编码RNA（lncRNA）外，最近在包括细菌、植物和脊椎动物在内的多个物种中已经鉴定出数十万种lncRNA，并且随着分析的转录组越来越多，新注释的lncRNA数量持续增加。在脊椎动物中，许多lncRNA的表达受到高度调控，呈现出离散的时空表达模式，这表明它们在广泛的发育过程中发挥作用，并且与经典的管家非编码RNA不同。此外，这些lncRNA的一个子集的失调与包括癌症在内的几种疾病的发生以及发育异常有关。然而，大多数脊椎动物lncRNA的功能仍然是个谜。因此，当前的一项主要任务是破译lncRNA的生物学作用，并揭示它们所影响的调控网络。本综述重点关注我们对脊椎动物中lncRNA的新认识，突出了在多个物种中对它们进行功能分析的一些最新进展，并强调了研究人员在表征lncRNA并确定其体内功能时面临的当前挑战。
