Pintacuda Greta, Young Alexander N, Cerase Andrea
Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Monterotondo, Italy.
Front Mol Biosci. 2017 Dec 19;4:90. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2017.00090. eCollection 2017.
Recent experimental evidence indicates that lncRNAs can act as regulatory molecules in the context of development and disease. Xist, the master regulator of X chromosome inactivation, is a classic example of how lncRNAs can exert multi-layered and fine-tuned regulatory functions, by acting as a molecular scaffold for recruitment of distinct protein factors. In this review, we discuss the methodologies employed to define Xist RNA structures and the tight interplay between structural clues and functionality of lncRNAs. This model of modular function dictated by structure, can be also generalized to other lncRNAs, beyond the field of X chromosome inactivation, to explain common features of similarly folded RNAs.
最近的实验证据表明，lncRNAs在发育和疾病背景下可作为调控分子。Xist是X染色体失活的主要调节因子，是lncRNAs如何通过作为招募不同蛋白质因子的分子支架发挥多层次和精细调控功能的经典例子。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了用于定义Xist RNA结构的方法以及lncRNAs结构线索与功能之间的紧密相互作用。这种由结构决定的模块化功能模型，也可以推广到X染色体失活领域之外的其他lncRNAs，以解释折叠相似的RNAs的共同特征。
