Differentially expressed lncRNAs and mRNAs identified by NGS analysis in colorectal cancer patients

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in gene regulation, but their impact on the pathogenesis of colorectal cancer and the biological function of cancer cells is unclear. In this study, we used next‐generation sequencing to study the differences in the expression profiles of lncRNAs and mRNAs in colorectal cancer tissues. We analyzed the differentially expressed genes by Gene Ontology/Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (GO/KEGG) enrichment and predicted new lncRNA functions. Our results revealed that compared with lncRNAs and mRNAs in nontumor colorectal tissues, 1019 lncRNAs (512 upregulated, 507 downregulated) and 3221 mRNAs (1606 upregulated, 1615 downregulated) were differentially expressed in tumor colorectal tissues (fold change >2 and P < 0.05). We validated some of these genes by qPCR. Furthermore, we identified some new lncRNAs differently expressed in colorectal cancer samples from patients in northern China. We confirmed the function of lncRNA‐FIRRE‐201 and SLCO4A1‐AS1‐202 in colorectal cancer cells to provide an experimental basis for studies on their roles in the occurrence and development of colorectal cancer and in the regulation of networks.