Sequence alignment of the primate lineage reveals evolutionary divergence and conserved secondary structural motifs in noncoding RNAs (opens in new tab)

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) constitute most of the human transcriptome and perform essential roles in chromatin organization and transcriptional regulation. Because lncRNA genes are not constrained by protein-coding ability, they tend to exhibit more rapid evolutionary divergence. Their poor nucleotide sequence conservation among mammals often led to the assumption that lncRNAs lack conserved structures. However, emerging evidence indicates that many noncoding RNAs adopt secondary and terti...