Regulatory Role of Small Nucleolar RNAs in Human Diseases

Stepanov, Grigory A.; Filippova, Julia A.; Komissarov, Andrey B.; Kuligina, Elena V.; Richter, Vladimir A.; Semenov, Dmitry V.

Research in this field is mostly focused on the involvement of human snoRNAs in oncological diseases. In mammalians the majority of snoRNAs are encoded within the introns of protein coding or noncoding genes, so-called "host-genes" (reviewed in [35, 36] ). Therefore, an alteration of snoRNA expression may result from the oncogenic processes accompanied by changes in transcriptional activity of the host-gene or aberrations of nuclear maturation of the pol II transcript. In that case, the snoRNA, cellular level of which rises/drops rapidly, may not play a key role in the pathology, but the alteration itself may indicate tumor progression and reflect metastatic potential [37] . On the other hand, snoRNA, the expression of which is positively or negatively correlated with tumor cells proliferation and invasion, may have considerable impact on carcinogenesis and thus should be treated as an oncogene when its expression goes far beyond the "normal level" [38] .