Figure 2

Additional characterization of putative lncRNAs highlights the striking properties of a telomere-associated lncRNA. (a) Guanine-cytosine (G+C) content comparison between predicted non-coding and protein-coding transcripts shows that non-coding G+C content is typically lower than coding transcript G+C content. lncRNA-TARE-4L (highlighted in red and indicated by arrow) and ribosomal RNAs (indicated by asterisks) have high G+C content. (b) The sequence of eight functional rRNAs is broadly conserved across Plasmodium species. The sequence of 19 putative lncRNAs is also significantly conserved in at least one other species (BLASTN P-value < 0.01), suggesting a preserved functional role. lncRNA-TARE-4L is strongly conserved across all eight species analyzed. Such a broad level of conservation is rarely seen in randomly sampled intergenic regions from P. falciparum (P-value = 0.045). Rows are ordered by number of species with BLASTN hits (P-value < 0.01), and then by strength of hits (defined by the product of P-values). Species are clustered based on the phylogeny proposed by Escalante and Alaya [86]. BLAST, basic local alignment and search tool.