Dynamic developmental regulation of the large non-coding RNA associated with the mouse 7C imprinted chromosomal region

We show here that LNCAT is developmentally regulated, with transcript variants being specifically expressed through neuronal differentiation in postmitotic neurons. We demonstrate that the LNCAT and Snurf-Snrpn transcripts are independent although they share common exons. We show an absence of expression of LNCAT through gametogenesis and in early embryo excluding a role of LNCAT in the imprint establishment. We also report a range of observations that challenges the widely accepted model of imprinted gene silencing of Ube3a. Although these last data do not completely exclude that the LNCAT variants including “Ube3a-ATS”exons could repress the paternal allele of Ube3a, they do allow us to propose an alternative and consistent model.