NONCODEVOL

Recent genomics analyses have facilitated the discovery of a novel major class of stable transcripts, now called long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). A growing number of analyses have implicated lncRNAs in the regulation of gene expression, dosage compensation and imprinting, and there is increasing evidence suggesting the involvement of lncRNAs in various diseases such as cancer. Despite recent advances, however, the role of the large majority of lncRNAs remains unknown and there is current debate on what fraction of lncRNAs may just represent transcriptional noise. Moreover, despite a growing number of lncRNAs catalogues for diverse model species, we lack a proper understanding of how these molecules evolve across genomes. Evolutionary analyses of protein-coding genes have proved tremendously useful in elucidating functional relationships and in understanding how the processes in which they are involved are shaped during evolution. Similar insights may be expected from a proper evolutionary characterization of lncRNAs, although the lack of proper tools and basic knowledge of underlying evolutionary mechanisms are a sizable challenge. Here, I propose to combine state-of-the-art computational and sequencing techniques in order to elucidate what evolutionary mechanisms are shaping this enigmatic component of eukaryotic genomes.