Long noncoding (lnc) RNAs go by different names depending on their genomic origin: long intervening, or intergenic, RNAs are far from any coding region; antisense noncoding RNAs, also known as natural antisense transcripts, are transcribed from the antisense strand of a gene. Only a fraction of lncRNAs have been functionally characterized to date, and for many organisms, an exhaustive catalog of all lncRNAs is still missing. Caenorhabditis elegans, one of the model organisms studied by the modENCODE consortium, now has over 64,000 annotated transcripts, which Nam and Bartel reanalyzed to arrive at a catalog of long intervening and antisense noncoding RNAs expressed at various stages of the nematode's development. Knowing more about genomic location, conservation and expression of these lncRNAs will aid in better understanding their roles.
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Long noncoding RNAs in the worm. Nat Methods 9, 782 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2129
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2129
