RNA is also implicated in a curious genetic phenomenon called “transinduction,” whereby transient transfection of a β-globin gene induces transcription of the “locus control region” and intergenic regions at the chromosomal β-globin locus in non-erythroid cell lines. This effect is dependent on transcription of the globin gene from the transfected plasmid and its association with the endogenous β-globin locus, but not on protein expression, and therefore is RNA-mediated [83], although the responsible sequences have not been mapped. Indeed, the general assumption that mRNA is simply an intermediate between gene and protein, albeit with cis-acting regulatory elements, may be incorrect, and there may be a false dichotomy between coding and noncoding RNA [159]. This is indicated by the complexity of overlapping sense and antisense coding and noncoding transcripts from most genomic loci [2]–[5] and evidence that protein-coding sequences are under constraint not only at the amino acid sequence level, but also within their RNA sequence [160]. Moreover, given that many gene knockout studies concomitantly delete potential sources of regulatory ncRNAs such as introns (given that many miRNAs and all snoRNAs are
