Expression and Variation in Non-coding RNAs for Diagnosis, Prevention and Cure

Diversity allows biological systems to evolve, adapt and thrive. At the molecular level, this can be achieved through variation acquired during information flow via DNA to RNA and from RNA to protein. In the last decade, next generation sequencing has allowed for high-resolution transcriptome mapping leading to identification of a large number of novel transcripts, namely noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) – unravelling increased potential for diversity. Non-coding RNAs which were once thought as junk were now beginning to emerge as important regulators in every aspect of development, health and disease. In the last decade, along with non-coding RNA expression, several reports have also mapped functional and disease associated variations within different subclasses of these non-coding RNAs, namely microRNAs, long non-coding RNAs, piRNAs, snoRNAs etc. We are only beginning to understand the importance of these non-coding RNAs and their implications at different stages of development and disease. This special issue is focused on bringing the state-of-the-art in this area and provide possible way forward in the future.



In this special issue, we are interested in topics focused on role of non-coding RNAs in development, host-pathogen interaction, disease biology and therapeutic approaches.

We welcome Original Research, Methods, Review and Brief Report.



The themes that we wish to include but are not limited to the following:



• Identify novel non-coding RNAs across species and its role in development;

• Identify functional variations within non-coding RNA and their implication in diseases;

• Develop computational tools, databases and algorithms to identify non-coding RNA variations;

• Exploring the effect of non-coding RNA variations on RNA-RNA interactions, namely, miRNA-mRNA, miRNA-Alu, miRNA-lncRNA-mRNA, etc

• Exploring how variations within non-coding RNAs can affect their structure, stability and processing;

• Discover the potential of non-coding RNAs as biomarkers in liquid biopsies, namely, circulating tumor cells, extracellular vesicles, and so forth;

• Targeting non-coding RNA and their disease associated variants for therapeutic approaches, namely, by small molecules, genome editing, RNA editing etc;

• Identify the effect of non-coding RNA variations in the host-pathogen response