Homo sapiens Transcriptome or Gene expression

Several studies have shown that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) may play anessential role in Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which is an important step in tumor metastasis, however, little is known about the global change of lncRNA transcriptome during EMT. To investigate how lncRNA transcriptome alteration contributes to EMT progression regulation, we performed a whole-transcriptome strand-specific RNA deep sequencing of MCF10A induced EMT by TGF-ß. Deep sequencing results showed that the long RNA (>=200-nt) transcriptome of MCF10A was undergone a global changed in EMT, and this alteration was determined as early as 8h after being induced using TGF-ß. 8703 linear novel genes with ambiguous protein-coding potential were identified, 512 of which were further determined to be novel lncRNAs. After analyzing the expression of 5473 known and novel lncRNAs, as well as 2208 known and novel circRNAs during EMT, we found a large numbers of lncRNAs might be involved in the regulation of EMT. Intriguingly, we identified 216 gene clusters constituted by lncRNAs and/ornovel genes in “gene desert” region. The expressions of all genes in these clusters were changed concurrently during EMT, indicating that these clusters might play important role in EMT. Our study reveals a global reprogramming of lncRNAs transcriptome in EMT and provides clues to the study of the molecular mechanism of EMT.

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