PUBLICATION

Detection of long non-coding RNA homology, a comparative study on alignment and alignment-free metrics

Authors
Noviello, T.M.R., Di Liddo, A., Ventola, G.M., Spagnuolo, A., D'Aniello, S., Ceccarelli, M., Cerulo, L.
ID
ZDB-PUB-181108-3
Date
2018
Source
BMC Bioinformatics   19: 407 (Journal)
Registered Authors
D'Aniello, Salvatore
Keywords
Homology, Long ncRNA, String similarity
MeSH Terms
  • Animals
  • Conserved Sequence*
  • Gene Expression Regulation*
  • Genome*
  • Humans
  • Mice
  • RNA, Long Noncoding/genetics*
  • Sequence Alignment/methods*
  • Zebrafish/genetics
PubMed
30400819 Full text @ BMC Bioinformatics
Abstract
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) represent a novel class of non-coding RNAs having a crucial role in many biological processes. The identification of long non-coding homologs among different species is essential to investigate such roles in model organisms as homologous genes tend to retain similar molecular and biological functions. Alignment-based metrics are able to effectively capture the conservation of transcribed coding sequences and then the homology of protein coding genes. However, unlike protein coding genes the poor sequence conservation of long non-coding genes makes the identification of their homologs a challenging task.
In this study we compare alignment-based and alignment-free string similarity metrics and look at promoter regions as a possible source of conserved information. We show that promoter regions encode relevant information for the conservation of long non-coding genes across species and that such information is better captured by alignment-free metrics. We perform a genome wide test of this hypothesis in human, mouse, and zebrafish.
The obtained results persuaded us to postulate the new hypothesis that, unlike protein coding genes, long non-coding genes tend to preserve their regulatory machinery rather than their transcribed sequence. All datasets, scripts, and the prediction tools adopted in this study are available at https://github.com/bioinformatics-sannio/lncrna-homologs .
Genes / Markers
Figures
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Antibodies
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping