Mammary gland development & breast cancer; connecting the dots by non-coding RNAs

摘要

The intriguing discovery that small non-coding RNAs called microRNAs played a key role in regulating cancer turned many heads towards finding such roles for other types of non-coding RNAs. These other types of non protein coding RNAs include transcribed ultraconserved regions (T-UCRs), small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNA), PlWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), large intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) and the heterogeneous group of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). We are now at the tip of the iceberg and in an exciting time to begin to finally connect the dots between normal mammary development and breast cancer by elucidating the roles of non-coding RNAs. This represents the next major frontier in understanding gene regulation during normal development and how these regulatory processes have been altered in breast cancer.