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Functions of long non-coding RNAs in plants: a riddle to explore

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Abstract

From being considered as transcriptional noises to molecules of uttermost importance, the journey of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) biology has been an interesting one. It was identification of HOTAIR in drosophila, which changed the view of scientific community towards the existence of lncRNAs. Subsequently, COLDAIR and COOLAIR were identified in Arabidopsis as lncRNAs in plants. This discovery opened up a new avenue for plant biologist to explore the riddle. These events transpired identification of many new lncRNAs in different plant taxa exploring their involvement in important biological functions such as vernalization, floral organ development, regulation of events of protein re-localization. But despite of major efforts of plant biologists for past few years, the complete functional characterization still remains an inscrutable map, yet to be explored. Though the implications of next generation sequencing have revolutionized the identification and characterization of lncRNAs, functions of majority of the lncRNAs still remains elusive. Development of new databases and enrichment of old ones, may help the scientific community to gain access to important information of lncRNAs. Establishment of new computational and experimental protocols may aid the researchers to unveil the functions of lncRNAs is plants. Here we made an attempt to summarize how lncRNAs can be predicted, important roles of lncRNAs reported in plants, conservation in plants along with information about web resources, computational tools and lncRNA-related web servers.

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Acknowledgements

AP wishes to record her gratefulness to her mentor Prof. A. K. Sharma who has ignited her curiosity in resolving biological problems and to enhance the knowledge in Plant Science. This work was financially supported by the Department of Biotechnology, West-Bengal (RD60/2015). We are also thankful to the Director, Bose Institute for providing all infrastructural facilities.

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  1. Division of Plant Biology, Bose Institute, Kolkata, 700054, India

    Pankaj Kumar Singh & Amita Pal

  2. Theoretical and Computational Biology Division, AIIST, Palta, 743122, India

    Sayak Ganguli

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Correspondence to Amita Pal.

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This article is dedicated to the memory of Profs AK Sharma and Archana Sharma.

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Singh, P.K., Ganguli, S. & Pal, A. Functions of long non-coding RNAs in plants: a riddle to explore. Nucleus 61, 261–272 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13237-018-0249-4

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