New findings may contribute to better treatment of liver cancer: Study - ANI News

Stockholm [Sweden], January 12 (ANI): In a new study, researchers have identified the presence of a specific connection between a protein and an lncRNA molecule in liver cancer.

The information is sent out using two different types of RNA molecules: coding RNA that converts DNA into proteins and non-coding RNA that do not produce proteins.

Because non-coding RNA molecules do not produce proteins, they have not been the main focus of research in the past, even though they amount to approximately 97 per cent of the RNA in our body.

"With the help of tissue material donated by patients with liver cancer, we have been able to map both the coding and non-coding part of our genome to identify which RNA-binding proteins have a high presence in liver cancer cells," said the study's senior author Claudia Kutter, a researcher at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institutet.

"We found that many of these proteins interacted with a long type of non-coding RNA molecules, so-called lncRNA," added Kutter.

The research team conducted a more detailed study of a specific pairing of an RNA-binding protein (CCT3) and an lncRNA molecule (LINC00326).

"However, the knowledge of this particular pairing is just the beginning and there are many more combinations of RNA-binding proteins and lncRNA molecules that we will further investigate