An Integrative Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Consistently Dysregulated Long Noncoding RNAs and Their Transcriptional...

Accumulating evidence suggests that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are emerging as important regulators involved in diseases, including heart failure (HF). In this study, we used microarray profiles to examine the transcriptome of lncRNAs in left ventricle samples derived from HF patients. We designed a custom pipeline to reannotate lncRNAs from microarray data and identified a set of consistently dysregulated lncRNAs in HF across the three independent cohorts. In total, 84 lncRNAs were found to be consistently dysregulated in at least two cohorts. By using a rank aggregation method, we integrated correlated protein-coding genes of the consistently dysregulated lncRNAs derived from HF samples and characterized their biological functions based on the correlated genes. The transcriptional regulation relationships of these lncRNAs ranged from 104 to 261, suggesting their important regulatory functions. Among the conserved lncRNAs, AC018647.1 and AC009113.1 showed significant dysregulation across all three cohorts. Our results showed that the two lncRNAs were involved in development-associated and cardiac cycle-associated functions.