Identifying new Long noncoding RNAs and Deciphering their role in Glioblastoma

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) is a novel class of non-coding transcripts, which plays a crucial role in the regulation of the cellular signalling circuits. In this research we have discovered 6 not previously studied lncRNAs, ZNF625-ZNF20, INHBA-AS1, TUBBP5, ZNF137P, ZNF767P, SLC7A5P1, are significantly dysregulated in glioma tissue and correlate with the survival rate. To unbiased identification of novel glioma prognostic lncRNAs, multiple gene expression datasets GSE7696, CGGA, TCGA, GSE4412, GSE4271, GLSS and CPTAC were used for this screen. Our findings suggest that ZNF625-ZNF20, ZNF137P, ZNF767P play oncogenic role and are overexpressed in tumoral tissue, whilst INHBA-AS1, SLC7A5P1 and TUBBP5 exhibit tumor protective properties and are downregulated. Further we performed a stratification analysis dividing samples into molecular and clinical groups: grade, recurrence status, 1p19q co-deletion status, IDH-mutation status. We obtained supportive evidence for some of the targets from the stratification analysis. Besides, we performed regression analysis that showed that SLC7A5P1 and ZNF767P may partake in the regulation of cell cycle. Next, qRT-PCR showed that putative targets are expressed differently in various cell lines. Collectively, we showed that computational assessment publicly available datasets can unravel new non–coding transcripts that play potentially important role in glioma growth and progression. Although, it is purely computational finding and in-vitro assays are needed, we think this can navigate us in future studies in designing functional experiments.