Lncing protein translation to metastasis

Abstract

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a novel class of regulators that play crucial roles in development and disease. Here we highlight the findings by Huang and colleagues that a regulatory lncRNA (treRNA) acts as a scaffold for a new ribonucleic protein complex that inhibits translation of E‐cadherin and promotes cell invasion. This work underscores the potential importance of lncRNAs in cancer metastasis. Genome‐wide transcriptome sequencing efforts have led to the discovery of thousands of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). LncRNAs are polyadenylated transcripts, typically more than 200 base pairs in length, that show polymerase II transcription initiation and elongation marks (Ulitsky and Bartel, 2013). Little is known about the biological roles of lncRNAs, but several potential mechanisms for the action of nuclear and cytoplasmic lncRNAs have been proposed. Nuclear lncRNAs mainly regulate the transcription of target genes by recruiting chromatin‐modifying complexes to specific regions (Rinn and Chang, 2012), while cytoplasmic lncRNAs may interact with other RNAs, serve as molecular decoys for microRNAs and RNA‐binding proteins, or function as cytoplasmic scaffolds of RNA–protein complexes. Interestingly, cytoplasmic lncRNAs may also interact with target mRNAs and protein complexes …