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Journal ArticleDOI

MicroRNAs: small RNAs with a big role in gene regulation

Lin He, +1 more
- 01 Jul 2004 - 
- Vol. 5, Iss: 7, pp 522-531
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TLDR
Two founding members of the microRNA family were originally identified in Caenorhabditis elegans as genes that were required for the timed regulation of developmental events and indicate the existence of multiple RISCs that carry out related but specific biological functions.
Abstract
MicroRNAs are a family of small, non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression in a sequence-specific manner. The two founding members of the microRNA family were originally identified in Caenorhabditis elegans as genes that were required for the timed regulation of developmental events. Since then, hundreds of microRNAs have been identified in almost all metazoan genomes, including worms, flies, plants and mammals. MicroRNAs have diverse expression patterns and might regulate various developmental and physiological processes. Their discovery adds a new dimension to our understanding of complex gene regulatory networks.

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Real-time quantification of microRNAs by stem–loop RT–PCR

TL;DR: A novel microRNA quantification method has been developed using stem–loop RT followed by TaqMan PCR analysis, which enables fast, accurate and sensitive miRNA expression profiling and can identify and monitor potential biomarkers specific to tissues or diseases.
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Silencing of microRNAs in vivo with ‘antagomirs’

TL;DR: It is shown that a novel class of chemically engineered oligonucleotides, termed ‘antagomirs’, are efficient and specific silencers of endogenous miRNA levels in mice and may represent a therapeutic strategy for silencing miRNAs in disease.
Journal ArticleDOI

Epigenetics in Cancer

TL;DR: The current understanding of alterations in the epigenetic landscape that occur in cancer compared with normal cells, the roles of these changes in cancer initiation and progression, including the cancer stem cell model, and the potential use of this knowledge in designing more effective treatment strategies are discussed.
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Non-coding RNAs in human disease

TL;DR: Dysregulation of these ncRNAs is being found to have relevance not only to tumorigenesis, but also to neurological, cardiovascular, developmental and other diseases, and there is great interest in therapeutic strategies to counteract these perturbations.
Journal ArticleDOI

A microRNA polycistron as a potential human oncogene

TL;DR: It is found that the levels of the primary or mature microRNAs derived from the mir-17–92 locus are often substantially increased in human B-cell lymphomas, and the cluster is implicate as a potential human oncogene.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

MicroRNAs: Genomics, Biogenesis, Mechanism, and Function

TL;DR: Although they escaped notice until relatively recently, miRNAs comprise one of the more abundant classes of gene regulatory molecules in multicellular organisms and likely influence the output of many protein-coding genes.
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The C. elegans heterochronic gene lin-4 encodes small RNAs with antisense complementarity to lin-14

TL;DR: Two small lin-4 transcripts of approximately 22 and 61 nt were identified in C. elegans and found to contain sequences complementary to a repeated sequence element in the 3' untranslated region (UTR) of lin-14 mRNA, suggesting that lin- 4 regulates lin- 14 translation via an antisense RNA-RNA interaction.
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Duplexes of 21-nucleotide RNAs mediate RNA interference in cultured mammalian cells

TL;DR: 21-nucleotide siRNA duplexes provide a new tool for studying gene function in mammalian cells and may eventually be used as gene-specific therapeutics.
Journal ArticleDOI

Prediction of Mammalian MicroRNA Targets

TL;DR: The predicted regulatory targets of mammalian miRNAs were enriched for genes involved in transcriptional regulation but also encompassed an unexpectedly broad range of other functions.
Journal ArticleDOI

Role for a bidentate ribonuclease in the initiation step of RNA interference

TL;DR: Dicer is a member of the RNase III family of nucleases that specifically cleave double-stranded RNAs, and is evolutionarily conserved in worms, flies, plants, fungi and mammals, and has a distinctive structure, which includes a helicase domain and dualRNase III motifs.
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