Epigenetic Regulation of the Vascular Endothelium by Angiogenic LncRNAs

Noeline Subramaniam; Ranju Nair; Philip A Marsden

doi:10.3389/fgene.2021.668313

Epigenetic Regulation of the Vascular Endothelium by Angiogenic LncRNAs

Front Genet. 2021 Aug 26:12:668313. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.668313. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Noeline Subramaniam^{1

2}, Ranju Nair^{2

3}, Philip A Marsden^{1

2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Marsden Lab, Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
² Marsden Lab, Keenan Research Centre in the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada.
³ Marsden Lab, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
⁴ Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Abstract

The functional properties of the vascular endothelium are diverse and heterogeneous between vascular beds. This is especially evident when new blood vessels develop from a pre-existing closed cardiovascular system, a process termed angiogenesis. Endothelial cells are key drivers of angiogenesis as they undergo a highly choreographed cascade of events that has both exogenous (e.g., hypoxia and VEGF) and endogenous regulatory inputs. Not surprisingly, angiogenesis is critical in health and disease. Diverse therapeutics target proteins involved in coordinating angiogenesis with varying degrees of efficacy. It is of great interest that recent work on non-coding RNAs, especially long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), indicates that they are also important regulators of the gene expression paradigms that underpin this cellular cascade. The protean effects of lncRNAs are dependent, in part, on their subcellular localization. For instance, lncRNAs enriched in the nucleus can act as epigenetic modifiers of gene expression in the vascular endothelium. Of great interest to genetic disease, they are undergoing rapid evolution and show extensive inter- and intra-species heterogeneity. In this review, we describe endothelial-enriched lncRNAs that have robust effects in angiogenesis.

Keywords: angiogenesis; endothelial cell; epigenetics; gene regulation; lncRNA; vascular.

Publication types

Review