Y RNA in cell cycle progression and cancer

A growing amount of evidence demonstrates the role of non-coding RNAs (ncRNA) in the etiopathogenesis of cancer. ncRNA are the product of the transcription of genes which are not further translated into proteins, thus they exert their functions as they are or - more frequently - after post-transcriptional modifications. In the last decades, several different classes of ncRNA had been described, both long (lncRNA) and short (sncRNA). The former are molecules usually longer than 200 nucleotides (nt), while the latter usually include species of a few tens of nucleotides in length, although exceptions are present (for example, circRNA span a length of 100-1600nt; snoRNA are 60-300nt). Y RNA belong to the sncRNA family and are in the range of ca. 80-120nt. Here we summarize the current knowledge about Y RNA biology, their role in normal cellular homeostasis, and their expression variations in human cancers.