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Legume Genomics and Genetics 2014, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1-3
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differentially expressed between ESCs and
differentiated neurons are related to schizophrenia
(SZ), bipolar disorder (BD) and even autism spectrum
disorders (ASD) (Lin et al., 2011). We have
summarized several lncRNAs involved in diseases of
the CNS and brain in Table 2.
The induced pluripotent stem cell technology, together
with next generation sequencing (Stadtfeld and
Hochedlinger, 2010) and even newer single-cell
sequencing (Eberwine et al., 2014) is viable to
generate tissue- and developmental stage-specific
neural cells. These technologies, focusing on cell
types, will be helpful to reveal more lncRNAs which
act as critical regulators of normal human brain
activity and associated disorders.
3 Perspectives
What we already know it that non-coding RNAs,
particularly lncRNAs, have an important role in CNS
development and brain functions. Large-scale
predictions and compilation of brain subregion and
CNS cell specific lncRNAs would aid determination
of the actions of specific lncRNAs in brain and CNS
development. In addition, comprehensive exploration
of how expression specificity of lncRNAs is mediated
during CNS and brain development can present the
transcriptional patterns of lncRNA transcription and
biological functions.
For miRNAs may have a large number of targets for
lncRNAs, it is still a problem to work out the
miRNA-lncRNA networks in brain and CNS
development, though related researches have been
reported (Liu et al., 2013). The relationships of
lncRNAs and human brain related diseases would
require systematic exploration. It is meaningful to use
lncRNAs as diagnostic and treating targets for
neurological diseases. Furthermore, developing tools
based on disease-related lncRNAs to produce animal
models with permutated lncRNA expression patterns
would help to comprehend the disease-causing reasons
of lncRNA-driven human brain-related disorders.
Our understandings towards genomic architecture
have been dramatically updated, as the lncRNAs are
found to be equally important in biological systems
and in regulation of CNS with protein-coding genes. It
is certain that exploring lncRNAs functions in neural
development and disease conditions would be a
research focus. lncRNAs are important for regulating
CNS development and pathophysiology of CNS and
brain. The regulatory functions involving regulatory,
structural and catalytic functions for lncRNAs. By
regulating genome-wide transcriptions, lncRNAs can
dynamically mediate spatiotemporally the global gene
networks. As the aforementioned brain region specific
expression property for lncRNAs, transcriptomic and
functional studies should be performed in different
kinds of CNS cells and different subregions of brain,
which would help explain whether lncRNAs have
epigenetic and other functional roles. Considering
GWAS has been performed for many CNS disorders,
it is necessary and easy to investigate if the mined
disorder related SNPs are related to lncRNAs, though
it is difficult to predict the causality of variations in
these lncRNA sequences (Mattick et al., 2009).
In addition, therapeutic strategies including RNA
interference (RNAi) technology and customized
high-throughput methods are needed for targeting
lncRNAs with aberrant expression in brain and CNS
diseases. Taken together, we indicate that lncRNAs
are important to modulate various brain related
processes and are a major factor that is important to
the brain development, which may be employed to
develop meaningful diagnostic and treating
approaches to treat brain and CNS related diseases.
High-throughput RNA sequencing together with
computational analysis would be useful to identify
brain subregion and CNS-specific lncRNAs, together
with their association with nearby protein-coding
genes. Exploring how lncRNAs regulate gene
transcription in
cis
or in
trans
is helpful to uncover
novel non-coding RNA regulatory mechanisms in
brain development and CNS differentiation.
Authors' contributions
JL drafted the manuscript. HBL and HL collected materials.
QW and YZ conceived of the study, and participated in its
design and coordination. All authors read and approved the
final manuscript.