Do lincRNAs play a role in human cancer?
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are pervasively transcribed in the genome and are emerging as new players in tumorigenesis due to their various functions in transcriptional, posttranscriptional and epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation. The best-studied examples include HOTAIR, a negative prognostic factor that exhibits pro-oncogenic activity in a variety of human cancers, CRNDE the gene symbol for Colorectal Neoplasia Differentially Expressed (non-protein-coding), a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) gene that expresses multiple splice variants and displays a very tissue-specific pattern of expression and ANRIL, a lincRNA that is required for the PRC2 recruitment to and silencing of p15(INK4B) tumor suppressor gene.