Lingling Chen, PhDDistinguished Adjunct Professor from CAS

The complete sequence of the human genome provided quite a surprise to many by revealing that more than 98% of the transcriptional output represents non-protein coding RNAs (ncRNAs). In addition to housekeeping ncRNAs (rRNAs, tRNAs, etc.) and small RNAs (microRNAs, piRNAs, etc.), long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs, >200nt) are emerging as a major class of eukaryotic transcripts with both reported and yet undiscovered roles in gene regulation.
Our long-term goal is to discover new regulatory RNA species and to study their biogenesis and their mechanisms of action in mammalian cells. In the next five years, we are particularly interested in the following areas.
1) Identify new RNA species in mammalian genomes by taking advantage of genome-wide approaches and computational analyses.
2) Explore their biogenesis and new modes of gene expression regulation by these RNA transcripts with molecular/cell biological and biochemical approaches.
3) Understand the regulatory roles of particular lncRNAs in nuclear architecture and function by genome editing and cell images.
4) Investigate the function of evolutionarily non-conserved lncRNAs by using of human embryonic stem cells as models and gain insights into their regulatory roles in the early development in primates.
Together, these studies have the potential to advance our understanding of the mechanisms and functional roles of lncRNA regulation in human genome.