Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are transcribed from thousands of loci of mammalian genomes and have been implicated in many important biological processes. Recent studies have revealed that many regulatory lncRNAs are produced and matured in the nucleus. Such RNAs seldom leave the nucleus to exert their functions. However, commonly used vectors that were designed to express mRNAs have not been optimized for the study of nuclear RNAs, leading to frequently cytoplasmic localization of nuclear RNAs when expressed from such vectors. New vectors are needed to develop to express lncRNAs in the correct cellular compartment. 

Under the supervision of Prof. CHEN Lingling from Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (SIBCB), Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences of Chinese Academy of Sciences, YIN Qingfei, HU Shibin and their colleagues have demonstrated that some common expression vectors (such as pEGFP-C1 and pcDNA3.0) designed for mRNA expression are inappropriate for the expression of nuclear RNAs.

To overcome this problem, the researchers have developed “snoVectors” that stably expresses virtually any sequence of interest and constrains its accumulation to the nucleus. Such sequences include lncRNAs, mRNAs, intronic sequences and pre-miRNAs. They have shown that RNAs, such as mNEAT1 lncRNA, expressed from snoVectors retains normal nuclear associations and functions. The newly developed snoVectors are very useful in conditions where nuclear RNA function is studied or where export to the cytoplasm needs to be avoided. 

This study entitled “SnoVectors for nuclear expression of RNA” was done by researchers from SIBCB, Prof. YANG Li from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and German Max Planck Society Partner Institute for Computational Biology and Prof. Gordon Carmichael at the University of Connecticut Health Center.  

This study was supported by grants from Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences. 

Top: A schematic illustration of the design of snoVector and the processing of snoRNA-ended-RNAs expressed from snoVectors. Bottom: RNAs expressed from the snoVector are retained in the nucleus, while those from pEGFP-C1 are not. (Image by Prof. CHEN Lingling’s group)