Landscape of the long non-coding RNA transcriptome in human heart

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been revealed to play essential roles in the human cardiovascular system. However, information about their mechanisms is limited, and a comprehensive view of cardiac lncRNAs is lacking from a multiple tissues perspective to date. Here, the landscape of the lncRNA transcriptome in human heart was summarized. We summarized all lncRNA transcripts from publicly available human transcriptome resources (156 heart samples and 210 samples from 29 other tissues) and systematically analysed all annotated and novel lncRNAs expressed in heart. A total of 7485 lncRNAs whose expression was elevated in heart (HE lncRNAs) and 453 lncRNAs expressed in all 30 analysed tissues (EIA lncRNAs) were extracted. Using various bioinformatics resources, methods and tools, the features of these lncRNAs were discussed from various perspectives, including genomic structure, conservation, dynamic variation during heart development, cis-regulation, differential expression in cardiovascular diseases and cancers as well as regulation at transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. Afterwards, all the features discussed above were integrated into a user-friendly resource named CARDIO-LNCRNAS (http://bio-bigdata.hrbmu.edu.cn/CARDIO-LNCRNAS/ or http://www.bio-bigdata.net/CARDIO-LNCRNAS/). This study represents the first global view of lncRNAs in the human cardiovascular system based on multiple tissues and sheds light on the role of lncRNAs in developments and heart disorders.