Functional Properties of Enhancer RNA and Its Important Regulatory Rolesin Human Diseases
LI Xing, MENG Zixing, LUO Qineng, LIAO Qi*
Enhancer is a region of the genome that can recognize and bind to transcriptional regulatoryproteins, and is involved in the gene transcription process as a cis-regulatory element together with promoter.Enhancers, in their activated state, open local chromatin and expose DNA mores to attract transcription factors,thereby further recruiting RNA polymerase to produce a class of non-coding RNA—eRNA (enhancer RNA).eRNA can promote the remote interaction between enhancer and promoter-specific chromatin to participate ingene transcription regulation, or combine with regulatory proteins such as transcription factors to promote genetranscription. eRNA has a variety of functions and regulatory mechanisms, and thus plays important roles inmany biological processes such as cell development and differentiation and disease development. In this paper,the characteristics, function, identification and database resources of eRNA, as well as the functional role ofeRNA in human neurological diseases, cancers, immune metabolism diseases and cardiovascular diseases aresystematically reviewed, and the future research direction of eRNA, as well as the possibility as potential therapeutic targets in diseases and the existing challenges are discussed.
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