RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 N-BLR, a primate-specific non-coding transcript, modulates the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and leads to colorectal cancer invasion and migration JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 004796 DO 10.1101/004796 A1 Isidore Rigoutsos A1 Sang Kil Lee A1 Su Youn Nam A1 Tina Catela Ivkovic A1 Martin Pichler A1 Simona Rossi A1 Peter Clark A1 Hui Ling A1 Yi Jing A1 Masayoshi Shimizu A1 Roxana S. Redis A1 Maitri Y. Shah A1 Xinna Zhang A1 Eun Jung Jung A1 Aristotelis Tsirigos A1 Li Huang A1 Jana Ferdin A1 Roberta Gafà A1 Riccardo Spizzo A1 Milena S. Nicoloso A1 Maryam Shariati A1 Aida Tiron A1 Jen Jen Yeh A1 Raul Teruel A1 Lianchun Xiao A1 Sonia A. Melo A1 Elsa Flores A1 Massimo Negrini A1 Menashe Bar-Eli A1 Sendurai A. Mani A1 Chang Gong Liu A1 Ioana Berindan-Neagoe A1 Manel Esteller A1 Michael J. Keating A1 Giovanni Lanza A1 George A. Calin YR 2014 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/05/06/004796.abstract AB Non-coding RNAs have been commanding increasingly greater attention in recent years as the few that have been functionalized to date play important roles in key cellular processes. Here we show that N-BLR, a ∼900 bp non-coding RNA, modulates the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, increases colorectal cancer invasion, and functions as a migration enabler by affecting the expression of ZEB1 and E-cadherin. In patients with colorectal cancer, N-BLR expression associates with tumor stage and invasion potential. As N-BLR contains several instances of a category of DNA motifs known as pyknons, we also designed a custom-made array to investigate the possibility that other pyknon loci may be transcribed. For several of the loci probed by the array we found that the corresponding pyknons are differentially expressed between cancer and normal tissue samples. Taken together the data suggest that a systematic study of other pyknon-containing non-coding RNAs like N-BLR may be warranted in the context of colorectal cancer.