Abstract: Cleft palate is a common congenital developmental malformation of the maxillofacial region. The development of palate has strict pattern and precise spatial and temporal sequence, and any small disturbance to its developmental process may lead to cleft palate. Several studies have shown that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) can regulate cell biological behavior at multiple levels and are closely related to the development of cleft palate. Therefore, in this paper, we introduced the mechanisms of lncRNA regulating cell differentiation, proliferation, autophagy, apoptosis and epithelial-mesenchymal transition, and preliminarily summarized the currently known lncRNA-miRNA regulatory axis in cleft palate in order to provide a new reference and perspective for the etiological study of cleft palate malformation.

Key words: cleft palate, gene expression regulation, RNA, long non-coding, microRNAs, competitive endogenous RNA, lncRNA-miRNA regulating axis