Is Evolutionary Conservation a Useful Predictor for Cancer Long Noncoding RNAs? Insights from the Cancer LncRNA Census 3

Adrienne Vancura; Alejandro H Gutierrez; Thorben Hennig; Carlos Pulido-Quetglas; Frank J Slack; Rory Johnson; Simon Haefliger

doi:10.3390/ncrna8060082

Is Evolutionary Conservation a Useful Predictor for Cancer Long Noncoding RNAs? Insights from the Cancer LncRNA Census 3

Noncoding RNA. 2022 Dec 7;8(6):82. doi: 10.3390/ncrna8060082.

Authors

Adrienne Vancura^{1

2

3

4}, Alejandro H Gutierrez^{1

3}, Thorben Hennig⁴, Carlos Pulido-Quetglas^{1

2

3}, Frank J Slack⁴, Rory Johnson^{1

3

5

6}, Simon Haefliger^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical Oncology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, 3010 Bern, Switzerland.
² Graduate School of Cellular and Biomedical Sciences, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland.
³ Department for BioMedical Research, University of Bern, 3008 Bern, Switzerland.
⁴ HMS Initiative for RNA Medicine, Department of Pathology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
⁵ School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin, D04 V1W8 Dublin, Ireland.
⁶ Conway Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Research, University College Dublin, D04 V1W8 Dublin, Ireland.

Abstract

Evolutionary conservation is a measure of gene functionality that is widely used to prioritise long noncoding RNAs (lncRNA) in cancer research. Intriguingly, while updating our Cancer LncRNA Census (CLC), we observed an inverse relationship between year of discovery and evolutionary conservation. This observation is specific to cancer over other diseases, implying a sampling bias in the selection of lncRNA candidates and casting doubt on the value of evolutionary metrics for the prioritisation of cancer-related lncRNAs.

Keywords: cancer; conservation; long noncoding RNA.

Abstract

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