High-Throughput Analysis of Noncoding RNAs: Implications in Clinical Epigenetics, published in the Book "Epigenetic Biomarkers and Diagnostics", 1st Edition

The evidence that protein-coding genes represent less than 2% of all human genome, and that more than 90% of it is actively transcribed, changed the shared view that RNA is a bridge between DNA sequences and proteins. The introduction of RNA-Sequencing technology and the parallel expansion of computational biology revealed that thousands of sites produce non-coding transcripts. These molecules, collectively known as non-coding RNAs are key players in transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation and in chromatin organization. Their altered expression is increasingly associated with pathological conditions. This chapter provides an overview about innovative high-throughput sequencing technologies and computational pipelines to profile non-coding RNAs, focusing on those with a proven epigenetic role. We examine the intriguing network between epigenome and ncRNAs and how these interactions are disrupted in human disease, thereby representing new potential clinical biomarkers.