Genomics and Applied Biology 2018, Vol.9, No.10, 62-71
62
Research Article Open Access
Recent Research Progress of Long Non-coding RNA
Wang Guofeng, Tang Haibao
Center for Genomic and Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, Fujian, 350002, China
Corresponding author email
Genomics and Applied Biology, 2018, Vol.9, No.10 doi
Received: 02 Nov., 2018
Accepted: 25 Dec., 2018
Published: 30 Dec., 2018
Copyright © 2018
Wang and Tang, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Wang G.F., and Tang H.B., 2018, Recent research progress of long non-coding RNA, Genomics and Applied Biology, 9(10): 62-71 (doi:
Abstract
In general, long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) refers to the transcripts that are greater than 200 nucleotides in length which
cannot encode a protein but have influential functions. Recently, lncRNA has gradually become a hot spot in the study of biology.
This review summarized the advances in understanding the roles of lncRNA in human disease, plant biology among many other
directions and how these results would affect us. An increasing number of lncRNA software has been developed to predict lncRNA
with the increasing attention paid to lncRNA. We mainly introduced several related software for lncRNA predictions, including their
sorting algorithms, and different advantages and disadvantages in their performance and accuracy. With the improvement of
sequencing technologies, the approaches for predicting lncRNA have also changed accordingly. In this review, the lncRNA prediction
and quantitative processes of different sequencing technologies were introduced in detail. Finally, we summarized some of the
challenges in lncRNA research as well as future prospects of lncRNA research, hoping to provide some help for future lncRNA
research.
Keywords
LncRNA; Bioinformatics; Sequencing; Gene regulation; LncRNA prediction
Background
Gene expression regulation plays an important role in growth and development of creature, and it can be divided
into regulation before transcription, regulation during transcription, regulation after transcription, regulation
during gene translation and after translation (Wang et al., 2015). LncRNA plays a vital role in gene expression
regulation of eucaryon (Hu et al., 2016). It is regarded that many lncRNA is not only correlated with mRNA
expression regulation, but also with growth and development of creature as well as biological diseases (Guo and
Liu, 2014).
As more and more researchers are involved in the study of lncRNA, the main mechanism by which lncRNA
performs biological functions has become increasingly clear. LncRNA mainly perform their biological functions
through the following biological mechanisms. For example, cell cycle regulation, mRNA degradation and
chromatin remodeling, gene imprinting, increasing the stability of mRNA, serving as the skeleton molecule of
histone modified complex and regulating the phosphorylation of serine and arginine splicing factors, and so on
(Xia et al., 2013).
With the in-depth study and development of lncRNA, it has been found that lncRNA not only performs its
biological functions in organisms with various mechanisms, but also is related to the occurrence of certain
diseases. For example, latest studies have shown that lncRNA molecules can significantly accelerate the
metastasis and regulate the epithelial interstitial transformation that controls colon cancer (Chen et al., 2017).
Although with the progress of sequencing technology, a large number of lncRNA have been identified. Our
understanding of the functions and actions of these identified lncRNA is still quite limited, and we still need to
explore the functions and actions of these lncRNA
in vivo
through new research methods.
LncRNA research is at the forefront of biological research and is one of the hot spots at present. The study of
lncRNA helps us to deep understand the structure and functions of genes from a new perspective. With the
continuous improvement of research technology and level, some biological regulatory processes related to
