#24 · ML / AI methods

Noncoding RNAs in human cells and tissues: annotation and regulatory profiling

The dominant thread is the annotation and functional characterization of noncoding RNAs. A preprint provides an expression-based annotation framework for human small vault RNAs from small RNA-seq, with miRNA-like and total sets enabling reproducible quantification. Two published studies address long noncoding RNAs: one maps molecular signatures of cell diversity modulated by lncRNAs in the human fetal spinal cord, and the other identifies human-specific lncRNAs, predicts their DNA-binding sites, and analyzes their regulatory impact on gene expression across human and archaic human contexts. What is new relative to standard differential expression is that gene-level regulation is attributed to specific noncoding transcripts, including lineage-specific ones. The items are heterogeneous, and the svtRNA work concerns quantification rather than regulatory inference.