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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Role Of Micrornas In Plant And Animal Development, Victor Ambros, James Carrington
Role Of Micrornas In Plant And Animal Development, Victor Ambros, James Carrington
Victor R. Ambros
Small RNAs, including microRNAs (miRNAs) and short interfering RNAs (siRNAs), are key components of an evolutionarily conserved system of RNA-based gene regulation in eukaryotes. They are involved in many molecular interactions, including defense against viruses and regulation of gene expression during development. miRNAs interfere with expression of messenger RNAs encoding factors that control developmental timing, stem cell maintenance, and other developmental and physiological processes in plants and animals. miRNAs are negative regulators that function as specificity determinants, or guides, within complexes that inhibit protein synthesis (animals) or promote degradation (plants) of mRNA targets.
Microrna Pathways In Flies And Worms: Growth, Death, Fat, Stress, And Timing, Victor Ambros
Microrna Pathways In Flies And Worms: Growth, Death, Fat, Stress, And Timing, Victor Ambros
Victor R. Ambros
Drosophila geneticists have uncovered roles for microRNAs in the coordination of cell proliferation and cell death during development, and in stress resistance and fat metabolism. In C. elegans, a homolog of the well-known fly developmental regulator hunchback acts downstream of the microRNAs lin-4 and let-7 in a pathway controlling developmental timing.
Micrornas And Other Tiny Endogenous Rnas In C. Elegans, Victor Ambros, Rosalind Lee, Ann Lavanway, Peter Williams, David Jewell
Micrornas And Other Tiny Endogenous Rnas In C. Elegans, Victor Ambros, Rosalind Lee, Ann Lavanway, Peter Williams, David Jewell
Victor R. Ambros
BACKGROUND: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that are processed from hairpin precursor transcripts by Dicer. miRNAs probably inhibit translation of mRNAs via imprecise antisense base-pairing. Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are similar in size to miRNAs, but they recognize targets by precise complementarity and elicit RNA-mediated interference (RNAi). We employed cDNA sequencing and comparative genomics to identify additional C. elegans small RNAs with properties similar to miRNAs and siRNAs. RESULTS: We found three broad classes of small RNAs in C. elegans: (1) 21 new miRNA genes (we estimate that C. elegans contains approximately 100 distinct miRNA genes, about 30% of …