2015-05-25

Human genome encodes near to 25,000 protein coding genes representing <2% of the total genome. The majority of the rest of the 98% genome is thought to be encoding the non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). The ncRNAs have strong relation to many diseases, such as; cancer and central nervous system disease, many ncRNAs display an abnormal expression level in many cancerous tissues. ncRNA are classified based on their length into long ncRNA (>200nt) and small ncRNA (<200nt). LincRNA, a subtype of ncRNAs, is carrying mRNA-like features which bearing a 5' end cap structure and 3' poly (A) tail. Splicing signals, transcriptional regulation and chromatin modification of lincRNAs are similar to those of protein-coding genes. The LINC00663 RNA gene is composed of three exons and two introns, it is located on 19p13.11. In this study, the expression levels of LINC00663 are evaluated in different human tissues and cell lines. LINC00663 are highly expressed in some human tissues such as spinal cord, thyroid gland, and thymus. Also high expression found in human glioblastoma cell lines and human umbilical vein endothelial cell line. The expression rate is higher in human cancerous cell lines than normal cells. The LINC00663 RNA has various different splice variants, resulting in different product size and multiple bands. Sequence and BLAST analysis were carried out for the samples with multiple bands. The comparison between nucleotide sequences product and BLAST analysis resulted in the determination of a novel exonic region between exon 2 and 3 in the LINC00663 RNA.