Tissue-specificity and co-expression analyses identify human long non-coding RNAs related to inherited retinal disease genes

The role of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in biological and pathological processes is still poorly understood. In this study, we aimed to identify lncRNAs that potentially contribute to retinal biology and Inherited Retinal Disease (IRD) by using two complementary strategies, tissue-specificity and location in topologically associating domains (TADs) containing IRD genes on one hand, and co-expression analyses on the other, applied to human retinal omics datasets. This combined approach resulted in the selection of 11 Retina Enriched IRD-gene Related (REIR) lncRNAs, one of which is novel. In-depth in silico and experimental characterization of REIRs identified novel REIR isoforms and confirmed retina-predominant (often photoreceptor-specific) expression as well as predicted functional association with visual function. Long-read direct cDNA sequencing (ONT) of three post-mortem human retina samples was used to delineate the novel REIR isoforms.

• Type: RNASeq
• Archiver: European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA)