TY - JOUR AU - Kapranov, Philipp AU - St Laurent, Georges AU - Raz, Tal AU - Ozsolak, Fatih AU - Reynolds, C. Patrick AU - Sorensen, Poul HB AU - Reaman, Gregory AU - Milos, Patrice AU - Arceci, Robert J. AU - Thompson, John F. AU - Triche, Timothy J. PY - 2010 DA - 2010/12/21 TI - The majority of total nuclear-encoded non-ribosomal RNA in a human cell is 'dark matter' un-annotated RNA JO - BMC Biology SP - 149 VL - 8 IS - 1 AB - Discovery that the transcriptional output of the human genome is far more complex than predicted by the current set of protein-coding annotations and that most RNAs produced do not appear to encode proteins has transformed our understanding of genome complexity and suggests new paradigms of genome regulation. However, the fraction of all cellular RNA whose function we do not understand and the fraction of the genome that is utilized to produce that RNA remain controversial. This is not simply a bookkeeping issue because the degree to which this un-annotated transcription is present has important implications with respect to its biologic function and to the general architecture of genome regulation. For example, efforts to elucidate how non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) regulate genome function will be compromised if that class of RNAs is dismissed as simply 'transcriptional noise'. SN - 1741-7007 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7007-8-149 DO - 10.1186/1741-7007-8-149 ID - Kapranov2010 ER -