@article {Rigoutsos004796, author = {Isidore Rigoutsos and Sang Kil Lee and Su Youn Nam and Tina Catela Ivkovic and Martin Pichler and Simona Rossi and Peter Clark and Hui Ling and Yi Jing and Masayoshi Shimizu and Roxana S. Redis and Maitri Y. Shah and Xinna Zhang and Eun Jung Jung and Aristotelis Tsirigos and Li Huang and Jana Ferdin and Roberta Gaf{\`a} and Riccardo Spizzo and Milena S. Nicoloso and Maryam Shariati and Aida Tiron and Jen Jen Yeh and Raul Teruel and Lianchun Xiao and Sonia A. Melo and Elsa Flores and Massimo Negrini and Menashe Bar-Eli and Sendurai A. Mani and Chang Gong Liu and Ioana Berindan-Neagoe and Manel Esteller and Michael J. Keating and Giovanni Lanza and George A. Calin}, title = {N-BLR, a primate-specific non-coding transcript, modulates the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and leads to colorectal cancer invasion and migration}, elocation-id = {004796}, year = {2014}, doi = {10.1101/004796}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, abstract = {Non-coding RNAs have been commanding increasingly greater attention in recent years as the few that have been functionalized to date play important roles in key cellular processes. Here we show that N-BLR, a \~{}900 bp non-coding RNA, modulates the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, increases colorectal cancer invasion, and functions as a migration enabler by affecting the expression of ZEB1 and E-cadherin. In patients with colorectal cancer, N-BLR expression associates with tumor stage and invasion potential. As N-BLR contains several instances of a category of DNA motifs known as pyknons, we also designed a custom-made array to investigate the possibility that other pyknon loci may be transcribed. For several of the loci probed by the array we found that the corresponding pyknons are differentially expressed between cancer and normal tissue samples. Taken together the data suggest that a systematic study of other pyknon-containing non-coding RNAs like N-BLR may be warranted in the context of colorectal cancer.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/05/06/004796}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/05/06/004796.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }