MicroRNAs and their regulatory roles in animals and plants

Abstract

microRNAs (miRNAs) are an abundant class of newly identified endogenous non-protein-coding small RNAs. They exist in animals, plants, and viruses, and play an important role in gene silencing. Translational repression, mRNA cleavage, and mRNA decay initiated by miRNA-directed deadenylation of targeted mRNAs are three mechanisms of miRNA-guided gene regulation at the posttranscriptional levels. Many miRNAs are highly conserved in animals and plants, suggesting that they play an essential function in plants and animals. Lots of investigations indicate that miRNAs are involved in multiple biological processes, including stem cell differentiation, organ development, phase change, signaling, disease, cancer, and response to biotic and abiotic environmental stresses. This review provides a general background and current advance on the discovery, history, biogenesis, genomics, mechanisms, and functions of miRNAs.

Identification of Potential microRNAs and Their Targets in Brassica rapa L.

“…Since the discovery of plant miRNAs in, 2002 (Llave et al, 2002b), miRNAs have become an important and integral topic in functional genomic research; consequently, several studies show that miRNAs are important regulatory elements involved in plant development, metabolism, biotic and abiotic stresses, and many other functions (Lu et al, 2005;Pulido and Laufs, 2010;Ruiz-Ferrer and Voinnet, 2009;Zhang et al, 2006a;2007c). B. rapa is an important crop with varying leaf and plant morphophytes.…”

A bioinformatics-based update on microRNAs and their targets in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

“…Therefore, it is of prime importance to identify the miRNA target genes to understand the miRNA regulatory function. However, there is no certain accepted standard to identify the miRNA targets experimentally nowadays, so bioinformatics based approaches were effective and rapid strategy to predict miRNA targets (Alexiou et al, 2009;John et al, 2004;Xie et al, 2005;Yoon and De Micheli, 2005;Zhang et al, 2007). In this study, in order to reduce the total number of false positive target genes, we combined the results of two widely used target prediction programs, miRanda and PITA, which could result in less reliance on seed matches but greater knowledge of target availability (Betel et al, 2010;Ma et al, 2012) and only the genes predicted by both programs were regarded as potential target genes.…”

Resveratrol Alters microRNA Expression Profiles in A549 Human Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Cells

“…Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs) were identified as important, small, and noncoding regulatory RNA molecules that posttranscriptionally modulate gene expression (Ambros and Lee, 2004;Bartel, 2004;Pillai et al, 2007;Plasterk, 2006;Zhang et al, 2007). Base pairing between miRNAs and complementary sites located in the 3′-untranslated regions of target mRNAs results in either the degradation or inhibition of mRNA translation, which subsequently reduces target gene protein levels (Ambros and Chen, 2007;Rana, 2007).…”