Biogenesis and mechanisms of action of ncRNAs

In this chapter, we introduce three highly important regulatory RNA species, namely, microRNAs, long noncoding RNAs, and circular RNAs. We provide an overview of how these RNAs are generated, i.e., RNA biogenesis, and we discuss general mechanisms-of-action, through which these different types of RNAs exert their regulatory function. This chapter provides the reader with the basic knowledge of regulatory noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) that is needed to read, understand, and use the information on the role of the transcriptome and epitranscriptome in atherosclerosis that is presented in this book. The chapter is highly structured, discussing each of the three types of regulatory RNA separately, so that you can easily use this chapter to fall back to as a handbook, when coming across more detailed functions and mechanisms of regulatory ncRNAs in further chapters.