Recent advances in sequencing technology led to the discovery that our genome harbors 1,000s of genes (58,000 and counting) expressing long RNAs that do not code for proteins known as long noncoding RNAs (lncRNA) and much less protein coding RNAs (21,000). To date, only a small fraction of these lncRNA have been studied and already have been found to play important roles in all cellular functions.

So what do these lncRNA do? It seems as if they may play regulatory roles:

1. they are expressed in a tissue specific manner;

2. their evolution accelerated recently –only 50% are conserved between mouse and primates.

3. Some were shown to bind proteins and regulate their activity.

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We find that these RNA species may offer answers to, what we believe are, some of the most interesting topics in biology today: decision making process in the cell, complexity, cancer and personalized medicine.