MINCR : a Long non-coding RNA between cancer and neurodegenerative pathways

The long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) system includes thousands of molecules involved in fundamental regulatory processes. Many lncRNAs participate to more than one process and interact with multiple targets, leading to different outcomes and making extremely challenging to clarify their mechanism of action. Understanding the multiple functions of non-coding transcripts has become more and more important in the past years due to the numerous roles exerted by lncRNAs in physiological or pathological conditions. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate the potential role of the MYC-Induced Long Non-Coding RNA MINCR depending on its expression level in SH-SY5Y cells through RNA-seq approach. Since it has been demonstrated that MINCR is deregulated in different tumours and in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, we focused our attention on MINCR potential role in cancer and neurodegeneration. Our results showed that MINCR overexpression caused great alteration in the expression level of cancer-related genes leading to disruption in many fundamental processes, such as cell cycle and growth factor signaling. Whereas MINCR downregulation highlighted a small number of deregulated genes involved in different neurodegenerative disorders, mostly concerning RNA metabolism and inflammation. Taken together, our data showed, firstly, a new prospect to the mechanisms through which lncRNAs act depending on their expression level and, secondly, shed light on the interplay between cancer and neurodegeneration, supporting the idea that these diseases can share key genes and pathways conversely regulated.