Transcriptional Regulation of lncRNA Genes by Histone Modification in Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Increasing studies have revealed that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are not transcriptional noise but play important roles in the regulation of a wide range of biological processes, and the dysregulation of lncRNA genes is associated with disease development. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and gets worse over time. However, little is known about the roles of lncRNA genes in AD and how the lncRNA genes are transcriptionally regulated. Herein, we analyzed RNA-seq data and ChIP-seq histone modification data from CK-p25 AD model and control mice and identified 72 differentially expressed lncRNA genes, 4,917 differential peaks of H3K4me3, and 1,624 differential peaks of H3K27me3 between AD and control samples, respectively. Furthermore, we found 92 differential peaks of histone modification H3K4me3 are located in the promoter of 39 differentially expressed lncRNA genes and 8 differential peaks of histone modification H3K27me3 are located upstream of 7 differentially expressed lncRNA genes, which suggest that the majority of lncRNA genes may be transcriptionally regulated by histone modification in AD.