Non - human orthologs encode Wdnm 1 - like protein

In a recent publication in , Wang . found a long noncoding RNA Science et al (lncRNA) expressed in human dendritic cells (DC), which they designated . Based on lentivirus-mediated RNA interference (RNAi) experiments in lnc-DC human and murine systems, they concluded that is important in lnc-DC differentiation of monocytes into DC. However, Wang . did not mention that et al their so-called “mouse ” gene was already designated “ lnc-DC ortholog ” and is known to encode a small secreted protein. We found that Wdnm1-like incapacitation of the open reading frame (ORF) is very rare among Wdnm1-like mammals, with all investigated primates except for hominids having an intact ORF. The null-hypothesis by Wang et al. therefore should have been that the human transcript might only represent a non-functional relatively young lnc-DC evolutionary remnant of a protein coding locus. Whether this null-hypothesis can be rejected by the experimental data presented by Wang . depends in et al part on the possible off-target (immunogenic or otherwise) effects of their RNAi procedures, which were not exhaustive in regard to the number of analyzed RNAi sequences and control sequences. If, however, the conclusions by Wang . on their human model are correct, and they may be, current et al knowledge regarding the locus suggests an intriguing combination Wdnm1-like of different functions mediated by transcript and protein in the maturation of several cell types at some point in evolution. We feel that the article by Wang et . tends to be misleading without the discussion presented here. al Johannes M. Dijkstra ( ) Corresponding author: [email protected] Dijkstra JM and Ballingall KT. How to cite this article: Non-human orthologs encode Wdnm1-like protein [version 1; referees: 2 lnc-DC 2014, :160 (doi: ) approved] F1000Research 3 10.12688/f1000research.4711.1 © 2014 Dijkstra JM and Ballingall KT. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Data associated Licence with the article are available under the terms of the (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication). Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. Grant information: Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed. 11 Jul 2014, :160 (doi: ) First published: 3 10.12688/f1000research.4711.1 1