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Functionality of Intron-Specific Genes and Cancer Stem Cells in the Progression of Colorectal Cancer

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Cancer Stem Cells: New Horizons in Cancer Therapies

Abstract

This review article deals with comprehensive information about the evolutionary history of introns with their localization and functions in the gene transcripts of colorectal cancer precisely. In this way, the major breakthrough in the molecular biology discipline was the discovery of introns by Richard Robert and Phil Sharp in 1977. Firstly, noncoding regions are recognized by various assortments of regulatory ncRNA sequences such as circular RNA, telomere-associated RNA, small nuclear RNA, Piwi-interacting RNA, small interfering RNA, small nucleolar RNA, microRNA, and long noncoding RNA. Fortunately, splicing process of mRNA strand deals with the excision of introns via spliceosomal proteins into mature mRNA which is witnessed only in eukaryotic organisms and devoid of the splicing machinery components in the prokaryotic organisms. The major focal point relies on intronic genes mainly involved in the progression of colorectal cancer with preliminary information. An alternative splicing process takes place in mRNA that implicates in intron retention leading to varied gene expression in cells and tissues and their promotion in colorectal cancer. Therefore, colorectal cancer-associated diseases have paved the way to know more about the intronic genes mainly concentrated among them in the progression of the related diseases. Hence, the focus of the researchers is toward the fascinating cellular and molecular biology aspects of the regulatory intronic sequences known to enhance as well as repress particular gene expression in tumor microenvironment of colorectal cancer by analyzing the genome and proteome levels for the betterment of human kind that is intended for various therapeutic purposes.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) (EMR/20l7/001877) for providing the Core Research Grant to Prof. Surajit Pathak and Chettinad Academy of Research and Education for the research support.

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Correspondence to Surajit Pathak .

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Gopi, J., Gopinath, M., Sun, XF., Pathak, S., Banerjee, A. (2020). Functionality of Intron-Specific Genes and Cancer Stem Cells in the Progression of Colorectal Cancer. In: Pathak, S., Banerjee, A. (eds) Cancer Stem Cells: New Horizons in Cancer Therapies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5120-8_13

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