Dysregulation of Long Non-coding RNA (lncRNA) Genes and Predicted lncRNA-Protein Interactions during Zika Virus Infection

Arunachalam Ramaiah; Deisy Contreras; Vineela Gangalapudi; Masumi Sameer Padhye; Jie Tang; Vaithilingaraja Arumugaswami

The main focus of this study is to discern the effect of Zika viral infection on the expression of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) genes. The presence of lncRNAs has been frequently determined with high confidence from transcriptomes and microarray technologies [8] . The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project Consortium (GENCODE release 24) estimates that the human genome incorporates around 62% of 25,823 ncRNA genes as lncRNA genes that encode 28,031 well-defined lncRNA transcripts (http://www.gencodegenes.org). The minority of the non-coding transcripts are small, whereas, the majority of them exceed 200 nucleotides in length, and they are consequently cataloged as lncRNAs [9] . While this practical definition is fairly arbitrary, the size cutoff clearly differentiates lncRNAs from small regulatory RNAs, such as microRNAs (miRNAs), endogenous small interfering RNAs (endo-siRNAs) that participate in RNA interference (RNAi), and Piwi-associated RNAs (piRNAs). It is noted that the classical ncRNAs are ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs), ribozymes, transfer RNAs (tRNAs), small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs), small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), and telomere-associated RNAs (TERC, TERRA) [10] . The majority of the lncRNA transcripts are expressed from intergenic regions and, to a lesser extent, in the protein-coding gene regions as sense or antisense transcripts.