ReviewLncRNA, miRNA and lncRNA-miRNA interaction in viral infection
Introduction
Approximately 75% of the human genome is transcribed, but less than 3% encodes proteins. These noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) were previously regarded as the “genomic noise’ of the coding regions (Chen and Wang, 2013). However, many studies have discovered that ncRNAs play a key role in numerous physiological processes, including cell proliferation and development, differentiation and apoptosis, as well as pathological conditions like disease manifestation, tumorigenesis, and viral infection (Sullivan, 2008). NcRNAs can be classified into housekeeping RNAs and regulatory RNAs. The former, including tRNAs and rRNAs, are ubiquitous in eukaryotic cells while the regulatory RNAs can be divided into small RNAs and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) based on the transcript length. Small RNAs are shorter than 200 nt and include piwiRNAs (piRNAs), small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs). Those longer than 200 nt are known as lncRNAs (Esteller, 2011; Katsarou and Rao, 2015). Here we mainly discuss the roles of miRNA and lncRNA in diverse biological processes according to their function in many emerging fields, especially the interaction with viruses.
Section snippets
Concept and classification
LncRNAs refer to ncRNAs with transcripts greater than 200 nt and lack apparent open-reading frames (ORFs). Over the past few years, lncRNAs have garnered considerable attention due to their roles in transcription, post-transcription and epigenetics networks (Tang and He, 2018; Liu and Mao, 2018; Liu and Ding, 2017; Huang and Wang, 2018), as well as their abundance, diverse classes, and additional functions (Morris and Mattick, 2014). LncRNAs are mainly transcribed by RNA polymerase II (RNA pol
Role of miRNAs in viral replication
MicroRNA (miRNA) is a class of small ncRNAs containing about 22 nt, which modulate many diverse biological processes through post-transcriptional gene regulation (Bartel, 2004). Studies found that some primary transcripts like pri-miR171b and pri-miR165a, which were transcribed by polII in the nucleus and cut into pre-miRNAs by Drosha in the cytoplasm, could translate peptides and promote the accumulation of the corresponding miRNAs (Lauressergues and Couzigou, 2015). Furthermore, studies have
LncRNA-miRNA interaction in viral infection
In virus-infected cells, a variety of ncRNAs encoded by host and viral genes respectively form a regulatory network in the interaction between host and virus. Consequently, the interaction between lncRNAs and miRNAs has continued to provoke great research interest. Many studies have also found a variety of mutual regulatory mechanisms for lncRNAs and miRNAs at the posttranscriptional level (Table 1, Fig. 1).
Discussion and prospects
LncRNAs and miRNAs are vital epigenetic and subcellular regulatory factors that can be included in multilayered cellular biological reactions. In this review, we have summarized the common features and mechanisms of these noncoding transcripts based on three aspects: lncRNAs, miRNAs and the regulatory paradigms between them in viral infection. Furthermore, both lncRNAs and miRNAs have complex and independent regulatory networks, which are often interactional and interoperable within
Author contributions
L.C. and Y.Z. contributed equally to this work.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by CAMS Initiative for Innovative Medicine (Grant number: 2016-I2M-1-019); National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number: 31700154); Science and Technology Project of Yunnan Province—general program(Grant number: 2016FB034); Major Science and Technology Special Project of Yunnan Province (Biomedicine) (Grant number: 2018ZF006).
References (136)
MicroRNAs: genomics, biogenesis, mechanism, and function
Cell
(2004)- et al.
The divergence between two oncogenic Herpesvirus saimiri strains in a genomic region related to the transforming phenotype
Virology
(1990) - et al.
Endogenous miRNA and target concentrations determine susceptibility to potential ceRNA competition
Mol. Cell
(2014) - et al.
HSV1 MicroRNA modulation of GPI anchoring and downstream immune evasion
Cell Rep.
(2016) - et al.
Long noncoding RNAs in viral infections
Virus Res.
(2016) - et al.
Persistently adenovirus-infected lymphoid cells express microRNAs derived from the viral VAI and especially VAII RNA
Virology
(2013) - et al.
The NeST long ncRNA controls microbial susceptibility and epigenetic activation of the interferon-γ locus
Cell.
(2013) - et al.
Virus-encoded microRNAs
Virology
(2011) - et al.
Editing of Epstein-Barr virus-encoded BART6 microRNAs controls their dicer targeting and consequently affects viral latency
J. Biol. Chem.
(2010) - et al.
The imprinted H19 lncRNA antagonizes let-7 microRNAs
Mol. Cell
(2013)