Discovering Novel A-to-I RNA editing sites in LncRNA

One of the most common modifications that RNA can undergo is RNA editing. RNA editing changes the sequence of the molecule relative to the genome, therefore the RNA can encode to different proteins and influence gene control. A-to-I editing is the most common of editing types and is catalyzed by the ADAR enzymes. Previous studies have found human RNA editing sites using various methods including machine learning. Although with high accuracy, they focus mainly within coding sequences and repeats such as Alu. Yet, sites located within Long non coding RNAs (LncRNA) are yet to be found. Using GTEx RNA sequencing (RNAseq) data and a set of unique filters we found a list of edited LncRNA sites in 47 human tissues. A list of LncRNA editing sites has high importance in understanding cell’s gene regulation. Using our specific locations we found a few conserved lncRNA editing sites. In addition, RNA editing has been shown to play an important role in cancer. Using TCGA RNAseq data we found altering levels of editing in lncRNAs between cancerous samples and matched normal samples in multiple cancers. Total of 673 statistically significant editing sites in 9 types of cancers were found, all include p-value with FDR smaller than 0.05. Some sites even showed to be differently edited across multiple cancers.