Independent 3'untranslated region RNA, a novel non-coding regulator RNA: what do we know now?

Abstract

An independent 3’untranslated region RNA (I3’UTR) is a non-coding RNA, which consists only of the 3’untranslated region of an mRNA, and exists in cells independently, detached from its original mRNA. As presently known, I3’UTRs are expressed from the promoters in the 3’untranslated region of protein-coding genes. In the past twenty years, studies on this type of RNA were only sporadically published, but it was noticed that tumor suppression was a common function of all the I3’UTRs in these studies. Recently, evidence has been presented that the I3’UTRs generally exist in eukaryotes, and are a novel regulating RNA species that is worth of thorough and in-depth investigations. In this mini-review, so-far known properties of I3’UTR are described and potential directions of further studies on this topic are proposed.