What non-coding RNA does

摘要

Mammalian genomes encode many classes of RNA that do not correspond to protein-coding (messenger) RNAs, tRNAs or rRNAs. Whether these non-coding RNAs have a function, and if so, what that is, remains unanswered. Eric Lander and colleagues have performed a systematic loss-of-function analysis of the long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) in mouse embryonic stem cells. Some of these are found to affect known regulators of the pluripotent state of stem cells. This work sets the stage for experiments to determine the precise mechanistic roles of lincRNAs.