Investigating the modulation of long non-coding RNAs associated to senescence using computational and biological approaches

Senescent cells (SC) are characterized by a distinct change in their morphology and gain of a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). A complex grid of molecular processes is implicated in the onset of the senescence that is in common also with other hallmarks of aging. Recently, the non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) have emerged as important gene expression regulators. Aiming to investigate the role of ncRNAs in replicative senescence (RS), we combined computational and biological approaches to study the ncRNA regulatory networks in models of RS. On the bioinformatics level, we analysed seven publicly available RNA-seq datasets related to RS experiments of human cellular models and we obtained a list of 41 lncRNAs modulated in at least three cellular datasets. At the biological level, by using three in vitro human cellular models of RS (fibroblasts, endothelial and smooth muscle cells), in SC we detected the modulated expression of lncRNAs such as PURPL, H19, SENEBLOC, MIR31HG.