RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Characterisation and functional predictions of canine long non-coding RNAs JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 303966 DO 10.1101/303966 A1 Céline Le Béguec A1 Valentin Wucher A1 Lætitia Lagoutte A1 Edouard Cadieu A1 Nadine Botherel A1 Benoît Hédan A1 Clotilde De Brito A1 Guillory Anne-Sophie A1 Catherine André A1 Thomas Derrien A1 Christophe Hitte YR 2018 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/04/20/303966.abstract AB Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a family of heterogeneous RNAs that play major roles in multiple biological processes. We recently identified an extended repertoire of more than 10,000 lncRNAs of the domestic dog however, predicting their biological functionality remains challenging. In this study, we have characterised the expression profiles of 10,444 canine lncRNAs in 26 distinct tissue types, representing various anatomical systems. We showed that lncRNA expressions are mainly clustered by tissue type and we highlighted that 44% of canine lncRNAs are expressed in a tissue-specific manner. We further demonstrated that tissue-specificity correlates with specific families of canine transposable elements. In addition, we identified more than 900 conserved dog-human lncRNAs for which we show their overall reproducible expression patterns between dog and humans through comparative transcriptomics. Finally, co-expression analyses of lncRNA and neighbouring protein-coding genes identified more than 3,400 canine lncRNAs, suggesting that functional roles of these lncRNAs act as regulatory elements. Altogether, this genomic and transcriptomic integrative study of lncRNAs constitutes a major resource to investigate genotype to phenotype relationships and biomedical research in the dog species.