Insights into long noncoding RNAs of naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber) and their potential association with cancer resistance

BACKGROUND: Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a class of ubiquitous noncoding RNAs and have been found to act as tumor suppressors or oncogenes, which dramatically altered our understanding of cancer. Naked mole rat (NMR, Heterocephalus glaber) is an exceptionally long-lived and cancer-resistant rodent; however, whether lncRNAs play roles in cancer resistance in this seductive species remains unknown. RESULTS: In this study, we developed a pipeline and identified a total of 4422 lncRNAs across the NMR genome based on 12 published transcriptomes. Systematic analysis revealed that NMR lncRNAs share many common characteristics with other vertebrate species, such as tissue specificity and low expression. BLASTN against with 1057 human cancer-related lncRNAs showed that only 5 NMR lncRNAs displayed homology, demonstrating the low sequence conservation between NMR lncRNAs and human cancer-related lncRNAs. Further correlation analysis of lncRNAs and protein-coding genes indicated that a total of 1295 lncRNAs were intensively coexpressed (r ≥ 0.9 or r ≤ −0.9, cP value ≤ 0.01) with potential tumor-suppressor genes in NMR, and 194 lncRNAs exhibited strong correlation (r ≥ 0.8 or r ≤ −0.8, cP value ≤ 0.01) with four high-molecular-mass hyaluronan related genes that were previously identified to play key roles in cancer resistance of NMR. CONCLUSION: In this study, we provide the first comprehensive genome-wide analysis of NMR lncRNAs and their possible associations with cancer resistance. Our results suggest that lncRNAs may have important effects on anticancer mechanism in NMR. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13072-016-0101-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.