Unearthing the hidden trove of long non-coding RNAs in plants

Long non-coding RNAs, an enigmatic class of genes that do not encode proteins, exhibit greater variability and are subject to more silencing mechanisms than previously known, a new study in Arabidopsis shows. Some lncRNAs even resemble transposons and are controlled by transposon silencing mechanisms. This is the result of a study by researchers from the Nordborg group at the Gregor Mendel Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.