( Scientists have identified a handful of...)MiRNA fingerprint identified in platelet formation

"Basically, we found that a specific set of miRNA genes are turned off in normal platelet development, but turned on in certain platelet-related leukemia cells," says lead author Dr. Ramiro Garzon, a clinical instructor in The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

The study is published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

MiRNA has only recently been acknowledged as an important force in biology. For decades, scientific dogma has held that messenger RNA (mRNA) was responsible for carrying out DNA instructions, or code, for protein production in the cell. Little was known, however, about how cells actually regulated that process. But over the past 10 years, researchers have discovered that miRNA ?tiny fragments of RNA typically no more than 20-25 nucleotides in length ?also regulates protein synthesis by interfering with mRNA's original instructions. They now know that miRNA helps to regulate many key biological processes, including cell growth, death, development and differentiation.

Dr. Carlo Croce, director of Ohio State's Human Cancer Genetics Program, was the first to discover a link between miRNA and cancer. In the current study, Croce, who is also a member of the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center, along with Garzon and colleagues from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, examined miRNA activity in the earliest phases of platelet development.

The researchers had previously uncovered substantial evidence linking certain patterns of miRNA to both normal and abnormal blood cell development, especially in diseases like chronic lymphocytic leukemia and lymphoma. Relatively little was kno
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Source:Ohio State University Medical Center