A team of researchers led by Professor Koji Eto (Department of Clinical Application) recently discovered the importance of a microRNA-based regulatory mechanism for enhancing the quality and quantity of platelets generated ...
Cell & Microbiology
Mar 29, 2024
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47
In natural environments, plants encounter biotic and abiotic stresses that can significantly affect their productivity and health. Recognizing the importance of timely stress diagnosis, researchers have developed various ...
Biotechnology
Mar 21, 2024
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5
Gene expression is controlled by numerous small RNA molecules called microRNAs, or miRNAs. However, specific functions of most miRNAs remain poorly understood. Working with worms, Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) researchers ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Feb 22, 2024
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32
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play a crucial role in plant gene regulation, with their biogenesis involving complex processes. Fine-tuning miRNAs is a powerful biotechnology strategy that can improve plant performance in the field, ...
Biotechnology
Dec 21, 2023
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1
A research group led by Prof. Yang Hui at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed an ultrasensitive MXene-enhanced plasmonic biosensor for real-time and label-free ...
Bio & Medicine
Oct 31, 2023
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4
Identifying different types of body fluids can help forensic experts reconstruct a crime scene, but it's difficult to do so. In a study published in Electrophoresis, researchers developed a method using two different types ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Oct 18, 2023
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1
To keep their vital functions in balance, many organisms use small snippets of RNA to "silence" messenger RNAs that code for certain proteins. New research from FMI scientists has revealed a molecular hub that integrates ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Jun 27, 2023
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1
To discover and thoroughly demonstrate the newly identified noncanonical cleavage mechanism, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) research team, led by Prof. Tuan Anh Nguyen, Assistant Professor of the ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 2, 2023
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66
In the early 1990s, scientists who were studying the development of a roundworm identified a small RNA molecule that regulated the expression of specific genes. This marked the discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs), which are now ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 24, 2023
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3
UC Riverside scientists have significantly advanced the race to control plant responses to temperature on a rapidly warming planet. Key to this breakthrough is miRNA, a molecule nearly 200,000 times smaller than the width ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 23, 2023
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62
A microRNA (abbreviated miRNA) is a short ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule found in eukaryotic cells. A microRNA molecule has very few nucleotides (an average of 22) compared with other RNAs.
miRNAs are post-transcriptional regulators that bind to complementary sequences on target messenger RNA transcripts (mRNAs), usually resulting in translational repression or target degradation and gene silencing. The human genome may encode over 1000 miRNAs, which may target about 60% of mammalian genes and are abundant in many human cell types.
miRNAs show very different characteristics between plants and metazoans. In plants the miRNA complementarity to its mRNA target is nearly perfect, with no or few mismatched bases. In metazoans, on the other hand, miRNA complementarity typically encompasses the 5' bases 2-7 of the microRNA, the microRNA seed region, and one miRNA can target many different sites on the same mRNA or on many different mRNAs. Another difference is the location of target sites on mRNAs. In metazoans, the miRNA target sites are in the three prime untranslated regions (3'UTR) of the mRNA. In plants, targets can be located in the 3' UTR but are more often in the coding region itself. MiRNAs are well conserved in eukaryotic organisms and are thought to be a vital and evolutionarily ancient component of genetic regulation.
The first miRNAs were characterized in the early 1990s. However, miRNAs were not recognized as a distinct class of biological regulators with conserved functions until the early 2000s. Since then, miRNA research has revealed multiple roles in negative regulation (transcript degradation and sequestering, translational suppression) and possible involvement in positive regulation (transcriptional and translational activation). By affecting gene regulation, miRNAs are likely to be involved in most biological processes. Different sets of expressed miRNAs are found in different cell types and tissues.
Aberrant expression of miRNAs has been implicated in numerous disease states, and miRNA-based therapies are under investigation.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
