Background: Kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC), as the most common type of renal cancer, has a high mortality and recurrence rate due to the fact that many patients are in advanced stage at the time of consultation. Finding a biological marker for early-stage KIRC has become a top priority. Recently, accumulating studies have shown that lncRNA can serve as a target for diagnosis and prognosis of malignancy. However, the involvement and mechanism of linc00342 has never been researched in KIRC. The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic and prognostic value of linc00342 in KIRC, and to explore the effects of linc00342 on the biological functions of KIRC cells.Methods: We downloaded the linc00342 expression data and clinical information of KIRC from the TCGA database and constructed a prognostic prediction model. In vitro, the effect of knocking down linc00342 on KIRC cell proliferation, apoptosis, metastasis, and invasion was measured by colony-formation assay, flow cytometric analysis, wound-healing assay and Transwell assay, respectively.Results: Our nomogram predictive model suggested linc00342 can serve as an independent prognostic factor for KIRC. GO functional analysis and KEGG pathway analysis showed linc00342 was involved in various biological functions of KIRC, and experiments in vitro verified this. In vitro, linc00342 was overexpressed in KIRC cells as shown by RT-qPCR. Moreover, we found that linc00342 can inhibit cell apoptosis and promote cell proliferation, invasion, and migration.Conclusions: Our study is the first to examine the diagnostic and prognostic value of linc00342 in KIRC and provides new ideas for the treatment of KIRC.