In order to bridge the gap between the observation of pervasive intergenic transcription by the ENCODE project and the currently limited set of annotated lincRNAs, we performed an analysis of a unique set of RNA-seq data derived from both novel and published datasets that complements and significantly expands prior efforts [14], [16], [19]. This analysis resulted in a clear corroboration of the observations of pervasive transcription across the human genome by the ENCODE project [14]. Furthermore, analysis of previously annotated putative lincRNAs, including those of the ENCODE project [19], in addition to de novo discovery of novel lincRNAs from RNA-seq data has resulted in the compilation of the most comprehensive catalog of human lincRNAs. Owing to the extended breadth of tissues sampled and relaxed constraints on transcript structure, we find significantly more lincRNAs than all previous lincRNA annotation sets combined. Our analyses revealed that these lincRNAs display many features consistent with functionality, contrasting prior claims that intergenic transcription is primarily the product of transcriptional noise [12]. In sum, our findings corroborate recent reports of pervasive transcription across the human genome
