Non-coding RNA analysis for gene expression regulation using bioinformatics tools

Advances in genome analysis have revealed that a genomic DNA contains gene coding regions other than protein coding sequences and transcription-regulating regions. Among these regions, there exist RNA coding regions involved in transcription regulation as a primary function, RNAs transcribed from these regions are referred to as non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). ncRNAs are known to affect regulation of transcription, but many functions are still unknown. On the other hand, since some ncRNAs specifically express in a particular disease, they may have potential for being used as drug targets. Also, while most of ncRNAs currently observed locate on intergenic regions of protein coding genes, some ncRNAs locate on intronic regions of protein coding genes. The aim of this work is to predict ncRNAs as drug targets regulating disease-associated genes based on positional relationship between protein genes and ncRNAs on a genome. In this paper, we compare ncRNAs located on intronic regions across species.