Abstract：Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) is a group of RNAs with broad biogenesis, which are longer than 200 nt and highly conserved in their secondary and tertiary structures. lncRNA that broadly participates in varied physiological processes in organisms has abundant biological function and can regulate expression of target genes at transcriptional, post-transcriptional and epigenetic levels. Furthermore, its sophisticated molecular regulatory mechanisms have already been widely revealed in biological processes such as chromosome dosage compensation, genomic imprinting, target mimicry, functional protein trafficking, and so on. As with the biological function of lncRNA being continuously revealed, researchers find that the highly conserved structure of lncRNA is crucially important to exert its biological function. Therefore, the advanced structure prediction of lncRNA becomes much more significant during the process of studying its biological function. At present time, researchers mainly use computational and mathematic methods to predict lncRNA functional domains, which is expected to illustrate its biological mechanisms at structural levels. In terms of the lncRNA related research methods, they also get rapid development. Among them, some comparatively mature approaches such as chromatin isolation by RNA purification (ChIRP) and RNA-binding protein immunoprecipitation (RIP) have already become widely used in the field of investigating the interaction between lncRNA and chromosome, and the interaction between lncRNA and proteins, respectively. This review focused on the origin, standard classification, advanced structure prediction, biological function and related approaches of lncRNA, which was aimed at providing researchers better understanding of lncRNA biological function in organisms.
