bims-lorfki Biomed News
on Long non-coding RNA functions in the kidney
Issue of 2021‒04‒11
one paper selected by
Nikita Dewani
Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine


  1. Essays Biochem. 2021 Apr 09. pii: EBC20200061. [Epub ahead of print]
      Recent efforts on the characterization of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) revealed their functional roles in modulating diverse cellular processes. These include pluripotency maintenance, lineage commitment, carcinogenesis, and pathogenesis of various diseases. By interacting with DNA, RNA and protein, lncRNAs mediate multifaceted mechanisms to regulate transcription, RNA processing, RNA interference and translation. Of more than 173000 discovered lncRNAs, the majority remain functionally unknown. The cell type-specific expression and localization of the lncRNA also suggest potential distinct functions of lncRNAs across different cell types. This highlights the niche of identifying functional lncRNAs in different biological processes and diseases through high-throughput (HTP) screening. This review summarizes the current work performed and perspectives on HTP screening of functional lncRNAs where different technologies, platforms, cellular responses and the downstream analyses are discussed. We hope to provide a better picture in applying different technologies to facilitate functional annotation of lncRNA efficiently.
    Keywords:  expression modulation; functional annotation; high-throughput screening; long non-coding RNA (lncRNA)
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1042/EBC20200061