Long non-coding RNAs in human early embryonic development and their potential in ART

<span class="paragraphSection"><div class="boxTitle">BACKGROUND</div>Human long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are an emerging category of transcripts with increasingly documented functional roles during development. LncRNAs and roles during human early embryo development have recently begun to be unravelled.<div class="boxTitle">OBJECTIVE AND RATIONALE</div>This review summarizes the most recent knowledge on lncRNAs and focuses on their expression patterns and role during early human embryo development and in pluripotent stem cells (PSCs). Public mRNA sequencing (mRNA-seq) data were used to illustrate these expression signatures.<div class="boxTitle">SEARCH METHODS</div>The PubMed and EMBASE databases were first interrogated using specific terms, such as ‘lncRNAs’, to get an extensive overview on lncRNAs up to February 2016, and then using ‘human lncRNAs’ and ‘embryo’, ‘development’, or ‘PSCs’ to focus on lncRNAs involved in human embryo development or in PSC.Recently published RNA-seq data from human oocytes and pre-implantation embryos (including single-cell data), PSC and a panel of normal and malignant adult tissues were used to describe the specific expression patterns of some lncRNAs in early human embryos.<div class="boxTitle">OUTCOMES</div>The existence and the crucial role of lncRNAs in many important biological phenomena in each branch of the life tree are now well documented. The number of identi...
Source: Human Reproduction Update - Category: OBGYN Source Type: research