“…The identification and functional characterization of these novel proteins is a new emerging field of biological sciences. Recent studies have shown that these novel proteins are involved in diverse biological functions such as mitochondrial function ( Chen et al, 2018 ; Stein et al, 2018 ), lipid metabolism ( Chibucos et al, 2014 ; Chen et al, 2018 ; Polycarpou-Schwarz et al, 2018 ; Singh et al, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ), tumor energy metabolism ( Chibucos et al, 2014 ; Kim et al, 2021 ), cell development ( Kulczynska and Siatecka, 2016 ; Fazi and Fatica, 2019 ; Attaway et al, 2021 ; Kersy et al, 2021 ; Kim et al, 2021 ), and DNA repair ( Sharma and Misteli, 2013 ; Slavoff et al, 2014 ; Zhou et al, 2015 ; Dianatpour and Ghafouri-Fard, 2017 ; Thapar, 2018 ; Attaway et al, 2021 ; Papaspyropoulos et al, 2021 ). This research topic in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology focused on recent progress in this emerging field, aiming to better understand “ncRNAs,” and served as a forum to discuss gene annotation and the discovery of novel physiological and pathological molecules.…”