Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword by Sidney Altman
- Foreword by Victor R. Ambros
- Introduction
- I Discovery of microRNAs in various organisms
- 1 The microRNAs of C. elegans
- 2 Non-coding RNAs – development of man-made vector-based intronic microRNAs (miRNAs)
- 3 Seeing is believing: strategies for studying microRNA expression
- 4 MicroRNAs in limb development
- 5 Identification of miRNAs in the plant Oryza sativa
- II MicroRNA functions and RNAi-mediated pathways
- III Computational biology of microRNAs
- IV Detection and quantitation of microRNAs
- V MicroRNAs in disease biology
- VI MicroRNAs in stem cell development
- Index
- Plate section
- References
5 - Identification of miRNAs in the plant Oryza sativa
from I - Discovery of microRNAs in various organisms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword by Sidney Altman
- Foreword by Victor R. Ambros
- Introduction
- I Discovery of microRNAs in various organisms
- 1 The microRNAs of C. elegans
- 2 Non-coding RNAs – development of man-made vector-based intronic microRNAs (miRNAs)
- 3 Seeing is believing: strategies for studying microRNA expression
- 4 MicroRNAs in limb development
- 5 Identification of miRNAs in the plant Oryza sativa
- II MicroRNA functions and RNAi-mediated pathways
- III Computational biology of microRNAs
- IV Detection and quantitation of microRNAs
- V MicroRNAs in disease biology
- VI MicroRNAs in stem cell development
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Introduction
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are single-stranded small RNAs of c.22 nt in length that function as post-transcriptional negative regulators in plants and animals (Bartel, 2004; Kim, 2005). Among all the categories of endogenous small RNAs, these tiny RNAs have received the most notice (Sontheimer and Carthew, 2005). They act as small guides and direct negative regulations through sequence complementarity to the 3′-untranslated regions (UTRs) in animals or coding sequences in plants of an even larger number of target mRNAs (Grishok et al., 2001; Lai, 2002; Bartel and Bartel, 2003). Now miRNA genes are recognized as a pervasive and widespread feature of animal and plant genomes. A large number of miRNAs have been characterized from different animals such as the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the fly Drosophila, and mammals including the human, the mouse and the rat. The total number of miRNAs in multicellular organisms was estimated to represent about 1% of all genes (Lim et al., 2003b; Grad et al., 2003; Bartel, 2004). However, recent studies show the number of miRNAs in the primate is larger than initially believed (Berezikov et al., 2005; Bentwich et al., 2005). Bioinformatic analysis implies that 25% of vertebrate genes are conserved targets of the miRNAs (Lewis et al., 2005). In total, multiple experimental and computational strategies all indicate that the true extent of miRNA regulation in complex organisms has not been fully recognized.
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- MicroRNAsFrom Basic Science to Disease Biology, pp. 70 - 82Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007