Identifying and Functionally Characterizing Tissue-specific and Ubiquitously Expressed Human LncRNAs

Overview

Journal Oncotarget

Specialty Oncology

Date 2016 Jan 14

PMID 26760768

Citations 63

Authors

Chunjie Jiang

Yongsheng Li

Zheng Zhao

Jianping Lu

Hong Chen

Na Ding

Guangjuan Wang

Juan Xu

Xia Li

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Recent advances in transcriptome sequencing have made it possible to distinguish ubiquitously expressed long non-coding RNAs (UE lncRNAs) from tissue-specific lncRNAs (TS lncRNAs), thereby providing clues to their cellular functions. Here, we assembled and functionally characterized a consensus lncRNA transcriptome by curating hundreds of RNA-seq datasets across normal human tissues from 16 independent studies. In total, 1,184 UE and 2,583 TS lncRNAs were identified. These different lncRNA populations had several distinct features. Specifically, UE lncRNAs were associated with genomic compaction and highly conserved exons and promoter regions. We found that UE lncRNAs are regulated at the transcriptional level (with especially strong regulation of enhancers) and are associated with epigenetic modifications and post-transcriptional regulation. Based on these observations we propose a novel way to predict the functions of UE and TS lncRNAs through analysis of their genomic location and similarities in epigenetic modifications. Our characterization of UE and TS lncRNAs may provide a foundation for lncRNA genomics and the delineation of complex disease mechanisms.

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