Featured long non-coding RNA – Pldi

The gene Polymorphic derived intron-containing, known as Pldi, is a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) first discovered in mouse. Although parts of its sequence were reported to be conserved in rat and human, it can only be expressed in mouse testis with a mouse-specific transcription start site. The consensus sequence of Pldi is also part of an antisense transcript AK158810 expressed in a wide range of mouse tissues.

Researchers at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences focused on sequence origin of Pldi and Ak158810. They demonstrated that their sequence was originated from an inter-genic region and is only presented in mammalians. Transposable events and chromosome rearrangements were involved in the evolution of ancestral sequence. Moreover, they discovered high conservation in part of this region was correlated with chromosome rearrangements, CpG demethylation and transcriptional factor binding motif. These results demonstrated that multiple factors contributed to the sequence origin of Pldi.

The researchers comprehensively analyzed the sequence origin of Pldi-Ak158810 loci. They provided various factors, including rearrangement, transposable elements, contributed to the formation of the sequence.

• Dai Y, Li S, Dong X, Sun H, Li C, Liu Z, Ying B, Ding G, Li Y. (2013) The de novo sequence origin of two long non-coding genes from an inter-genic region. BMC Genomics [Epub ahead of print]. [article]