Vol.30 No.3 (2008 June): 281-286

RNAa: A New Contra-standard Model for ncRNA Regulating Gene Expression

Li-Tang Zhang¹, Yi-Gang Wang¹, Xin-Yuan Liu^1,2*

(¹Xin Yuan Institute of Medicine and Biotechnology, College of Life Science, Zhejiang Science and Technology University, Hangzhou 310018, China; ²Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Science, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai 200031, China)

Abstract RNA activation (RNAa) is a newly discovered model for non-coding RNA (ncRNA) regulating gene expression in contra-standard manner. The process is mediated by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) which promotes the expression of homologous genes in a transcriptional level. As a newly discovered mechanism, RNAa differs greatly with traditional means in gene regulation, in which not only spatial interaction between dsRNA and it's target gene is involved, but also RNA interference (RNAi)-like sequence complement is dependent, that numerous targeting sites can be artificially selected to activate gene expression with comparatively high specificity. RNAa makes its targets beyond CpG islands and Alu sequences of promoter under control of methylation and acetylation state of histone H3 with long lasting activation than RNAi, which provides a new tool to treat cancer, metabolization and heredity diseases. Thereby, this article compared traditional ncRNA regulations with RNAa. Whereafter, reviewed relatively on RNAa's discovery, mechanism and it's future applications.

Key words RNA activation; contra-standard regulation; non-coding RNA

Received: January 7, 2008 Accepted: March 13, 2008
The work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No.2004CB518804) and the Zhejiang Science & Technology Support Plan (No.2007C33027)
*Corresponding author. Tel: 86-571-86843186, Fax: 86-571-86843185, E-mail: xyliu@sibs.ac.cn