Structural features and conservation of the lncRNA HOTAIR in primates

HOTAIR adopts a multidomain architecture with conserved regions across primates, showing structural covariation in specific domains relevant to gene regulation in cancer.

• Why it matters: Understanding HOTAIR's structural features is crucial because its overexpression promotes breast cancer invasion and metastasis, yet its mechanisms of gene regulation remain unclear.
• What they did: Researchers predicted the full-length in cellulo secondary structure of HOTAIR using chemical probing in a metastatic breast cancer cell line, comparing in vitro and in cellulo data across primates.
• The result: Findings reveal a multidomain structure with unique local features and conserved regions, providing a foundation for future studies on HOTAIR's structure-function relationships in cancer.