title: Brain-specific noncoding RNAs are likely to originate in repeats and may play a role in up-regulating genes in cis.
abstract: The mouse and human brain express a large number of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs). Some of these are known to participate in neural progenitor cell fate determination, cell differentiation, neuronal and synaptic plasticity and transposable elements derived ncRNAs contribute to somatic variation. Dysregulation of specific long ncRNAs (lncRNAs) has been shown in neuro-developmental and neuro-degenerative diseases thus highlighting the importance of lncRNAs in brain function. Even though it is known that lncRNAs are expressed in cells at low levels in a tissue-specific manner, bioinformatics analyses of brain-specific ncRNAs has not been performed. We analyzed previously published custom microarray ncRNA expression data generated from twelve human tissues to identify tissue-specific ncRNAs. We find that among the 12 tissues studied, brain has the largest number of ncRNAs. Our analyses show that genes in the vicinity of brain-specific ncRNAs are significantly up regulated in the brain. Investigations of repeat representation show that brain-specific ncRNAs are significantly more likely to originate in repeat regions especially DNA/TcMar-Tigger compared with non-tissue-specific ncRNAs. We find SINE/Alus depleted from brain-specific dataset when compared with non-tissue-specific ncRNAs. Our data provide a bioinformatics comparison between brain-specific and non tissue-specific ncRNAs. This article is part of a Directed Issue entitled: The Non-coding RNA Revolution.
authors.affiliation: Genome Biology for Neurodegenerative Diseases, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Paul-Ehrlich-Straße 15, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Margherita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Francescatto
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Centre, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Ole Maaløes Vej 5, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark.
authors.forename: Morana
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vitezic
authors.affiliation: Genome Biology for Neurodegenerative Diseases, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Paul-Ehrlich-Straße 15, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Heutink
authors.affiliation: Genomics Core Facility, Biomedical Research Centre, Guy's and St Thomas' Trust, 7th Floor Tower Wing, Guy's Hospital, London SE1 9RT, United Kingdom. Electronic address: alkamanjul@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Alka
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Saxena
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D019295:Computational Biology; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D009928:Organ Specificity; D022661:RNA, Untranslated / Q000235:genetics*; D050436:Regulatory Elements, Transcriptional / Q000235:genetics*; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid / Q000235:genetics*; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D015533:Transcriptional Activation
chemical_list: D022661:RNA, Untranslated
keywords: Brain-specific ncRNAs; Microarray; lncRNAs, repeat derived ncRNAs; ncHARs