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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Bioessays. 2016 Aug 23;38(10):991–996. doi: 10.1002/bies.201600110

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Classification and mechanisms of lncRNA. A: According to their proximity to protein-coding genes, lncRNAs can be classified into intronic, divergent, intergenic, sense, and antisense lncRNAs. B: Mechanisms of lncRNA in regulation of gene expression. In the nucleus, lncRNAs can interact with chromatin/DNA to regulate gene expression through mediating long-range chromatin interactions or recruitment of regulators to specific genomic loci (left panel). In cytoplasm, lncRNAs can promote or repress the assembly of a protein complex through protein scaffold function or harming protein-protein interaction (middle panel). Furthermore, lncRNAs can interact with mRNA directly and regulate its stability, splicing, or translation or function as sponge to sequester other RNAs, especially miRNAs (right panel).