Experimental Validation of the Noncoding Potential for lncRNAs.

In recent years, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been increasingly recognized as critical regulators of a broad spectrum of cellular processes. Recent advancements in proteomic technologies have uncovered that an abundance of noncoding genes, including lncRNAs, have been misannotated and in reality encode proteins. This revelation underscores the need to accurately determine the coding potential of lncRNAs prior to assessment of their functional mechanisms. Here, we detail numerous experimental techniques useful in the determination of lncRNA coding potential. Several of these methods are doubly useful in that they may also be employed in studying the function of a lncRNA, be it via an RNA, protein, or both.