Long noncoding RNA plays a key role in metastasis and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Guangbing Li,Shuguang Chen,Haitao Zhao,Haohai Zhang,Xiaobo Yang,Ruoyu Miao,Xueshuai Wan,Anqiang Wang,Chengpei Zhu,Lian He

doi:10.1155/2014/780521

Abstract

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been attracting immense research interests. However, only a handful of lncRNAs had been thoroughly characterized. They were involved in fundamental cellular processes including regulation of gene expression at epigenetics as well as tumorogenesis. In this paper, we give a systematic and comprehensive review of existing literature about lncRNA involvement in hepatocellular carcinoma. This review exhibited that lncRNAs played important roles in tumorigenesis and subsequent prognosis and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma and elucidated the role of some specific lncRNAs such as MALAT1 and HOTAIR in the pathophysiology of hepatocellular carcinoma and their potential of being therapeutic targets.

Highlights

Human genome only composes about 25,000 protein-coding genes as published by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium [1]
It has been estimated that nearly 15,000 long noncoding RNA (ncRNA) (lncRNAs) are presented in the human genome, but only a small fraction is expressed in a given cell type [10, 11]
Ji and colleagues developed a metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) knockout model in human lung tumor cells [39]. They found that MALAT1 did not alter alternative splicing but rather actively regulated gene expression including a set of metastasis-associated genes

Summary

Introduction

Human genome only composes about 25,000 protein-coding genes as published by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium [1]. The remaining bigger portion of human genome was not functional and being considered as “junk DNA” [2, 3] Studies have explored these “junk DNA” based on RNA deep sequencing and genome-wide analysis that the “junk DNA” was not derived from any known genes and does not encode any protein [4, 5]. Many types of ncRNA do have known biological functions, such as transcriptional and translational regulation of protein-coding sequences [8, 9]. It has been estimated that nearly 15,000 lncRNAs are presented in the human genome, but only a small fraction is expressed in a given cell type [10, 11]. Li et al found that the Hox transcript antisense intergenic RNA (HOTAIR) induced PTEN methylation, promoting human laryngeal squamous cancer cell proliferation [17]

Role of lncRNA in Cancer

Role of lncRNA in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Findings

Conclusions