MALAT1 long non-coding RNA in cancer

A recent massive parallel sequencing analysis has shown the fact that more than 80% of the human genome is transcribed into RNA. Among many kinds of the non-protein coding RNAs, we focus on the metastasis associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) that is a long non-coding RNA upregulated in metastatic carcinoma cells. Two molecular functions of MALAT1 have been proposed, one is the control of alternative splicing and the other is the transcriptional regulation. In this review, we document the molecular characteristics and functions of MALAT1 and shed light on the implication in the molecular pathology of various cancers. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Clues to long noncoding RNA taxonomy1, edited by Dr. Tetsuro Hirose and Dr. Shinichi Nakagawa.