Functional classification of long non-coding RNAs by k-mer content

Autor: Megan D. Schertzer, Allison R Baker, Daniel Sprague, Qidi Chen, Jessime M. Kirk, Peter J. Mucha, Kevin M. Weeks, David W Collins, J. Mauro Calabrese, Joshua Wooten, Matthew J. Smola, Kaoru Inoue, David M Lee, Shuo Wang, Christopher R Horning, Susan O Kim
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Nature genetics
ISSN: 1546-1718
1061-4036
DOI: 10.1038/s41588-018-0207-8
Popis: The functions of most long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are unknown. In contrast to proteins, lncRNAs with similar functions often lack linear sequence homology; thus, the identification of function in one lncRNA rarely informs the identification of function in others. We developed a sequence comparison method to deconstruct linear sequence relationships in lncRNAs and evaluate similarity based on the abundance of short motifs called k-mers. We found that lncRNAs of related function often had similar k-mer profiles despite lacking linear homology, and that k-mer profiles correlated with protein binding to lncRNAs and with their subcellular localization. Using a novel assay to quantify Xist-like regulatory potential, we directly demonstrated that evolutionarily unrelated lncRNAs can encode similar function through different spatial arrangements of related sequence motifs. K-mer-based classification is a powerful approach to detect recurrent relationships between sequence and function in lncRNAs.
Databáze: OpenAIRE