Purpose of review: This review aims to summarize and discuss the function and molecular mechanism of miRNA and lncRNA in the heart, focusing on ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathy.
Recent findings: Extensive studies in the past decades have identified numerous protein-coding genes that are highly expressed in the heart, playing essential roles in the regulation of cardiac gene expression, heart development, and function. Furthermore, mutations in many of these genes have been identified and are linked to cardiovascular disease. Intriguingly, it is now recognized that majority of our genome is "non-coding," which produces a large amount of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), including microRNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). Emerging evidence has indicated that these classes of non-coding RNAs participate in most (if not all) aspects of cardiac gene expression, cardiomyocyte proliferation, differentiation, and cardiac remodeling in response to stress. Recent findings have demonstrated important functions for non-coding RNA in ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathy. It is expected that non-coding RNAs will become promising therapeutic targets for cardiovascular diseases.
Keywords: Heart failure; Ischemic cardiomyopathy; Non-ischemic cardiomyopathy; lncRNA; miRNA.