A blind spot in lncRNA discovery.

Measuring RNA turnover reveals a small, fast-decaying lncRNA subpopulation often missed by abundance-based methods.

• Why it matters: Understanding lncRNA functions is limited by current methods that focus on abundance, potentially overlooking critical regulatory RNAs with rapid decay rates.
• What they did: The study combines RNA abundance data with turnover measurements to identify and analyze the fast-decaying lncRNA subset, testing if their tails are enriched for regulatory functions.
• The result: Findings suggest that incorporating turnover data uncovers a hidden lncRNA population enriched for regulators, improving our ability to identify functional lncRNAs and their roles.