How’s That For Gratitude: let-7 miRNA Targets Dicer’s Coding SequenceSeptember 30, 2008Recent evidence has shown that the let-7 miRNA bites the hand that feeds it . . . and in an unconventional way. By searching for short sequences conserved at the nucleotide level in the coding regions of 17 species, Hilary Coller and co-workers at Princeton University identified three let-7 target sites within the coding sequence […]
When Inhibitors Become Inhibited: miR 21 Becomes the PreySeptember 26, 2008It turns out that the small but mighty inhibitors of gene expression have an achilles heel and can be served up a taste of their own effect. Qihong Huang, Alexander Deiters, and colleagues at The Wistar Institute, North Carolina State University, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discovered the first small molecule inhibitor […]
Roadmap EpigenomicsSeptember 25, 2008If you’re looking to sneak your grant in on the earliest date for the Epigenomics of Human Health and Disease (R01) grant, time is ticking. Applications are being accepted starting this Sunday. That’s the right, the date says September 28th. For those of you looking for additional information, the grant information is listed below, but […]
miRNAs: The New Addition to the Biomarker BuffetSeptember 16, 2008Human blood serum is cellular buffet of different biological molecules sampled continuously from every tissue of the body. So it’s not surprising that many researchers have attempted to identify biomarkers in serum that reflect a particular physiological or disease state. Most of these potential biomarkers are proteins (important-yes, exciting-not really), but Zvi Bentwich, Ayelet Chajut, […]
The Many Faces of the miRNA-Argonaute ComplexSeptember 16, 2008Some might recall playing with Mr. Potato Head as a child (or maybe earlier this morning). By sticking different noses, mouths, eyes, shoes, or other accessories on the basic potato head module, you could generate a variety of silly-looking spuds. Similarly, the interaction of different accessory proteins with the miRNA-argonaute complex might determine the fate […]
DNA Methylation, miRNAs, and MetastasisSeptember 9, 2008OK this one is a week old, but we love a paper that addresses epigenetic regulation of epigenetic regulators, so we couldn’t resist a recent PNAS report that identified a miRNA DNA methylation signature for human cancer metastasis. Like proteins, miRNAs act as oncogenes, tumor suppressors, and metastatic mediators, and their expression can be influenced […]
Joan Steitz: Leading Ladies in Epigenetics ResearchSeptember 4, 2008In 1967, Joan Argetsinger Steitz received her Ph.D. from Harvard University, where she conducted her doctoral research on RNA bacteriophage in the lab of Dr. James Watson. As a post-doc at Cambridge, Dr. Steitz studied ribosome binding sites in mRNA. In 1970, she joined the faculty at Yale and began her groundbreaking and now famous […]
miRNAs: From worthless junk to evolutionary slam dunkAugust 17, 2008Gone are the days when microRNAs (miRNAs) were relegated to the unimportant “junk heap” of sequences cluttering up the genome. We now know that these tiny, highly conserved non-coding RNAs play important roles in RNA stability and translation by base-pairing with partially complementary sequences in the 3’ untranslated regions (UTRs) of target mRNAs. Moreover, a […]
Ligation Mediated RNA-RNA AnalysisJuly 21, 2008Last week, researchers from the Karolinska Institute and the University of London released data on an innovative approach for studying RNA-RNA interactions. Data supporting the multitude of RNA functions in our cells continues to pour in, but challenges in analyzing the effecting complexes in cellular processes persist, so we tip our hats to this team […]
miRNA Retention and EnhancementJuly 21, 2008miRNAs, the small but mighty inhibitors of complementary mRNA sequences, might be accused of having a Napoleon complex, but they don’t start out life itty-bitty—they are transcribed as long primary miRNAs (pri-miRNAs). Cleavage by the RNase III-like enzyme Drosha in the nucleus releases a ~70-nt stem-loop structure (pre-mRNA), which is further processed by Dicer in […]