Tag: "mirna" at biology news

miRNA profiling

To be published in the June 1 issue of G&D, Dr. Thomas Tuschl and colleagues describe the most comprehensive profile to date of microRNA (miRNA) expression during zebrafish development. The authors cloned 154 distinct miRNAs (10 of which are completely novel) in a developmental and tissue-specific manner. . They also identified ?for the first time ever in a vertebrate ?a new class of small RN...

miRNAs and musculature

In an effort to understand the biological function of the microRNA mir1, Drs. Nicholas Sokol and Victor Ambros (Darmouth Medical School) have studied the expression profile, transcriptional regulation and loss-of-function phenotype of Drosophila mir-1 (Dmir-1). Mir-1 is an evolutionarily conserved miRNA, whose expression in mouse and humans is limited to heart and skeletal muscle. Strikingly, th...

MiRNA fingerprint identified in platelet formation

Scientists have identified a handful of microRNAs (miRNAs) that appear to play a significant role in the development of platelets ?blood cells critical to the body's ability to form clots following an injury. They also say some of these same miRNAs, when acting abnormally, may contribute to certain forms of leukemia. ....

Biologists develop genome-wide map of miRNA-mRNA interactions

Researchers at New York University's Center for Comparative Functional Genomics and the University of California, Berkeley have used computational analyses to predict a genome-wide map of microRNA (miRNA) targets in the animal model organism, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). MicroRNAs bind to messenger RNA (mRNA) in a specific section, called 3'UTR, and are known to regulate them. Parts of th...

miRNA-mediated silencing of mRNAs

Dr. Elisa Izaurrralde and colleagues (EMBL; Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology-Tuebingen) provide new mechanistic insight into gene silencing by miRNAs . .. .. Dr. Izaurralde and colleagues demonstrate that the P-body protein, GW182, interacts with the miRNA effector Argonaute proteins as well as mRNA degradation e...