Long non‐coding RNAs have become the focus of considerable interest over the past few years. Intriguing novel functions have been reported for lincRNAs. Three recent papers identify lincRNAs that work in a more conventional way—encoding protein—in each case a small polypeptide with an interesting biological activity (Magny et al, 2013; Pauli et al, 2014), (Bazzini et al, 2014).
See also: EG Magny et al (September 2013),
A Pauli et al (February 2014) and
AA Bazzini et al (May 2014)
Conventional protein‐coding genes account for only a fraction of the RNA transcribed in animal genomes. Many of us grew up thinking that RNAs came in two flavours: those with protein‐coding capacity and non‐coding RNAs with structural roles, in the form of ribosomal RNAs, tRNAs, snoRNAs, etc. Interest in other forms of long non‐coding RNAs (lincRNAs) has been growing over the past decade, building in part on the fact that many lincRNAs are the precursors for micro‐RNA biogenesis. In some cases, the miRNA is the only known product of a primary transcript that can be tens of Kb in length. But there is much more to lincRNAs: functions include X inactivation and other forms of chromatin modification (Gupta et al, 2010; Tian et al, 2010), enhancer‐like functions regulating transcription (Orom et al, 2010) and regulation of post‐transcriptional …
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