Profiling long noncoding RNA of multi-tissue transcriptome enhances porcine noncoding genome annotation

To construct a comprehensive pig noncoding transcriptome and further enhance porcine noncoding genome annotation.

We performed a tissue-based long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) profiling via exploiting 32,212 nonredundant lncRNA isoforms corresponding to 18,676 lncRNA loci across 34 normal pig tissues using high-throughput sequencing. Furthermore, the potential relationship between our identified lncRNAs and known protein-coding genes were globally assessed via a comprehensive computation-based strategy, developing a genome-wide lncRNA-targeted genome draft for further functional studies on noncoding genes.

Among these lncRNAs, ubiquitously expressed lncRNA appeared at a higher level compared with tissue-specific one. Findings herein provide insight into comprehensive knowledge of porcine noncoding RNAs and further enhance pig noncoding annotation. For ease of accessing the information of the identified lncRNAs, we deposited those with high confidence in the publicly available NONCODE database, providing a valuable resource for facilitating pig noncoding genomic studies.