Molecular Biology Commons^™

Immunopurification Of Ago1 Mirnps Selects For A Distinct Class Of Microrna Targets, Xin Hong, Molly Hammell, Victor Ambros, Stephen Cohen

Victor R. Ambros

microRNAs comprise a few percent of animal genes and have been recognized as important regulators of a diverse range of biological processes. Understanding the biological functions of miRNAs requires effective means to identify their targets. Combined efforts from computational prediction, miRNA over-expression or depletion, and biochemical purification have identified thousands of potential miRNA-target pairs in cells and organisms. Complementarity to the miRNA seed sequence appears to be a common principle in target recognition. Other features, including miRNA-target duplex stability, binding site accessibility, and local UTR structure might affect target recognition. Yet computational approaches using such contextual features have yielded largely …