Abstract
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for nearly one in every seven deaths. Over the last decade, various targeted therapeutics have been introduced, but there has been no corresponding improvement in patient survival. Since the mortality rate of cardiovascular disease has not been significantly decreased, efforts have been made to understand the link between heart disease and novel therapeutic targets such as non-coding RNAs. Among multiple non-coding RNAs, long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) has emerged as a novel therapeutic in cardiovascular medicine. LncRNAs are endogenous RNAs that contain over 200 nucleotides and regulate gene expression. Recent studies suggest critical roles of lncRNAs in modulating the initiation and progression of cardiovascular diseases. For example, aberrant lncRNA expression has been associated with the pathogenesis of ischemic heart failure. In this article, we present a synopsis of recent discoveries that link the roles and molecular interactions of lncRNAs to cardiovascular diseases. Moreover, we describe the prevalence of circulating lncRNAs and assess their potential utilities as biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis of heart disease.
Highlights
Since the discovery of the human genome, technological advances have enabled scientists to study the whole genome in detail and its implication in physiology and pathology
In a study conducted by Shirasawa et al, the T allele of Ex9b-single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)10 in a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) was discovered to increase the risk of an individual for autoimmune thyroid disease, which is caused by abnormal immune responses [32]
It is known that coronary artery disease is featured by the transcriptional reprogramming, which activates a network of cardiac signals that interact and converge on cardiac transcription factors such as serum response factor (SRF), NKX2.5, myocyte-specific enhancer factor 2C (MEF2C), GATA binding protein 4 (GATA4), and
Summary
Since the discovery of the human genome, technological advances have enabled scientists to study the whole genome in detail and its implication in physiology and pathology. Researchers have ignored these non-coding regions, but non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) transcribed from these regions are recently emerging as important regulators of cellular processes with many implications in human diseases [2]. They can regulate neighboring genes in cis-formation They can function in trans-acting formation to regulate the expression of genes, which are not located closely with lncRNAs. LncRNAs play important roles in the initiation and development of diseases, cardiovascular diseases [7]. LncRNAs play important roles in the initiation and development of diseases, cardiovascular diseases [7] They can control the expression of disease-related genes by functioning as molecular scaffolds to regulate chromatin modifications and influencing the epigenetic programs of the transcriptome [8]. We describe classes of lncRNAs, genetic functions of lncRNAs and their roles in cardiovascular development and diseases, followed by a summary of recent findings that utilize lncRNAs as diagnostic markers of heart disease
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