Roles of LncRNAs in Viral Infections

Liu, Weiwei; Ding, Chan

LncRNAs are the transcribed and spliced products of RNA polymerase II or III transcription, are 5 ′ capped, and may contain a polyadenylated tail at the 3 ′ end. The expression of lncRNAs is much lower in comparison to mRNAs and lncRNAs are expressed in cell-, tissue-, and developmental stage-specific manners (Djebali et al., 2012) . According to their position relative to the neighboring protein-coding gene, lncRNAs are classified as sense, antisense, bidirectional, intronic, or intergenic. The human genome encodes thousands of lncRNAs. Previously, lncRNAs were considered as "dark matter" or "junk" in the genome (Doolittle, 2013) . However, recent studies have illuminated the roles of lncRNAs, and they are now considered important physiological regulators of cell homeostasis, growth, and differentiation (Wapinski and Chang, 2011; Hu et al., 2012; Fatica and Bozzoni, 2014) . Emerging data have also identified the important roles of lncRNAs in regulating anti-viral responses. This review highlights specific lncRNAs associated with viral infection, specifically focusing on their expression and function.