Same RNA Acts in Neurodegeneration and Cancer

The long noncoding RNA MINCR, implicated in ALS and Alzheimer’s disease as well as several types of cancer, appears to function differently when present at high versus low levels.

Written byAbby Olena, PhD

| 3 min read

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Overexpression of a long noncoding RNA called MINCR causes many changes in expression levels of genes involved in cancer, according to a study published October 15 in Genomics, and its downregulation affects neurodegeneration-related genes. Finding a role for MINCR in both neurodegeneration and cancer hints at broad effects that lncRNAs are likely having in many pathological and developmental scenarios.

“There’s a lot of emerging data that connects brain cancer with normal developmental processes in the brain,” says John Prensner, a pediatric oncologist and researcher at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study. “These [long noncoding] RNAs have multiple and flexible functions in different contexts,” he adds, “so one of the central strengths of the paper is to be able to start to tie together these different disease processes.”

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Meet the Author

Abby Olena, PhD
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As a freelancer for The Scientist, Abby reports on new developments in life science for the website. She has a PhD from Vanderbilt University and got her start in science journalism as the Chicago Tribune’s AAAS Mass Media Fellow in 2013. Following a stint as an intern for The Scientist, Abby was a postdoc in science communication at Duke University, where she developed and taught courses to help scientists share their research. In addition to her work as a science journalist, she leads science writing and communication workshops and co-produces a conversational podcast. She is based in Alabama.
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