De Novo Profiling of Long Non-Coding RNAs Involved in MC-LR-Induced Liver Injury in Whitefish: Discovery and Perspectives

Microcystin-LR (MC-LR) is a potent hepatotoxin for which substantial gap in knowledge persists regarding the underlying molecular mechanisms of liver toxicity and injury. Although long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been extensively studied model organisms, our concerning role lncRNAs injury limited. Given that show low levels sequence conservation, their becomes even more unclear non-model organisms without an annotated genome, like whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus). The objective this study was to discover profile aberrantly expressed polyadenylated are involved MC-LR-induced whitefish. Using RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) data, we de novo assembled high-quality transcriptome. This enabled us find 94 differentially (DE) putative evolutionary conserved lncRNAs, such as MALAT1, HOTTIP, HOTAIR or HULC, 4429 DE novel differed from protein-coding transcripts (PCTs) terms minimum free energy, guanine-cytosine (GC) base-pair content length. Additionally, identified might be 3′ autonomous untranslated regions (3′UTRs) mRNAs. We found both well could serve biomarkers