versatility of microrna biogenesis多功能性的microrna生源论.pdfVIP

Versatility of MicroRNA Biogenesis Naama Volk, Noam Shomron* Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel Abstract MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short single-stranded RNA molecules that regulate gene expression. MiRNAs originate from large primary (pri) and precursor (pre) transcripts that undergo various processing steps along their biogenesis pathway till they reach their mature and functional form. It is not clear, however, whether all miRNAs are processed similarly. Here we show that the ratio between pre-miRNA and mature miRNA forms varies between different miRNAs. Moreover, over-expression of several factors involved in miRNA biogenesis, including Exportin-5, Drosha, NF90a, NF45 and KSRP, displayed bidirectional effects on pre/mature miRNA ratios, suggesting their intricate biogenesis sensitivity. In an attempt to identify additional factors that might explain the versatility in miRNA biogenesis we have analyzed the contribution of two hnRNP family members, hnRNPH1 and hnRNPR. Knock-down or over-expression of these genes suggested that hnRNPR inhibits, whereas hnRNPH1 facilitates, miRNA processing. Overall, our results emphasize that miRNA biogenesis is versatile. Citation: Volk N, Shomron N (2011) Versatility of MicroRNA Biogenesis. PLoS ONE 6(5): e19391. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0019391 Editor: Lin Zhang, University of Pennsylvania, United States of America Received March 18, 2011; Accepted March 28, 2011; Published May 10, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Volk, Shomron. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by the Chief Scientist Office, Ministry of Health, I