Gao Fan, Cai Ye, Kapranov Philipp, Xu Dongyang
Institute of Genomics, School of Biomedical Sciences, Huaqiao University, 201 Pan-Chinese S & T Building, 668 Jimei Road, Xiamen, 361021, China.
Genome Biol. 2020 Apr 14;21(1):93. doi: 10.1186/s13059-020-01994-5.
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) represent a major fraction of the transcriptome in multicellular organisms. Although a handful of well-studied lncRNAs are broadly recognized as biologically meaningful, the fraction of such transcripts out of the entire collection of lncRNAs remains a subject of vigorous debate. Here we review the evidence for and against biological functionalities of lncRNAs and attempt to arrive at potential modes of lncRNA functionality that would reconcile the contradictory conclusions. Finally, we discuss different strategies of phenotypic analyses that could be used to investigate such modes of lncRNA functionality.
长链非编码RNA（lncRNAs）是多细胞生物转录组的主要组成部分。尽管少数经过充分研究的lncRNAs被广泛认为具有生物学意义，但在整个lncRNAs集合中，这类转录本的占比仍是一个激烈争论的话题。在此，我们综述了支持和反对lncRNAs生物学功能的证据，并试图得出lncRNA功能的潜在模式，以调和相互矛盾的结论。最后，我们讨论了可用于研究lncRNA功能模式的不同表型分析策略。
