Coley, A.B.; DeMeis, J.D.; Chaudhary, N.Y.; Borchert, G.M. Small Nucleolar Derived RNAs as Regulators of Human Cancer. Biomedicines2022, 10, 1819.
Coley, A.B.; DeMeis, J.D.; Chaudhary, N.Y.; Borchert, G.M. Small Nucleolar Derived RNAs as Regulators of Human Cancer. Biomedicines 2022, 10, 1819.
Coley, A.B.; DeMeis, J.D.; Chaudhary, N.Y.; Borchert, G.M. Small Nucleolar Derived RNAs as Regulators of Human Cancer. Biomedicines2022, 10, 1819.
Coley, A.B.; DeMeis, J.D.; Chaudhary, N.Y.; Borchert, G.M. Small Nucleolar Derived RNAs as Regulators of Human Cancer. Biomedicines 2022, 10, 1819.
Abstract
In the past decade, RNA fragments derived from full length small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) have been shown to be specifically excised and functional. These sno-derived RNAs (sdRNAs) have been implicated as gene regulators in a multitude of cancers, controlling a variety of genes post-transcriptionally via association with the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). In this review, we have summarized the literature connecting sdRNAs to cancer gene regulation. SdRNAs possess miRNA-like functions, and are able to fill the role of tumor-suppressor or tumor-promoter in a tissue context-dependent manner. Indeed, there are many miRNAs that are actually derived from snoRNA transcripts, meaning that they are truly sdRNAs and as such are included in this review. As sdRNAs are frequently discarded from ncRNA analyses, we emphasize that sdRNAs are functionally relevant gene regulators and likely represent an overlooked subclass of miRNAs. Based on the evidence provided by the papers reviewed here, we propose that sdRNAs deserve more extensive study to better understand their underlying biology and to identify previously overlooked biomarkers and therapeutic targets for a multitude of human cancers.
Keywords
cancer; gene regulation; small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA); small nucleolar derived RNA (sdRNA); microRNA (miRNA); RNA; snoRNA; sdRNA; miRNA; genetics
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
