Abstract Introduction Ischaemia reperfusion injury (IRI) is an unavoidable, significant consequence of renal transplantation. MicroRNAs are small, non-coding RNA molecules that regulate multiple downstream mRNA targets. MiRNA-21-5p and miRNA-24-3p have been previously implicated in IRI. Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) block specific microRNAs, with previous work by our group demonstrating the...

Wilms tumour is the most common childhood kidney cancer. Here we report the whole-exome sequencing of 44 Wilms tumours, identifying missense mutations in the microRNA (miRNA)-processing enzymes DROSHA and DICER1, and novel mutations in MYCN, SMARCA4 and ARID1A. Examination of tumour miRNA expression, in vitro processing assays and genomic editing in human cells demonstrates that DICER1 and DROS...

Previous studies in vivo reported that processing of primary microRNA (pri-miRNA) is coupled to transcription by RNA polymerase II (RNAP II) and can occur co-transcriptionally. Here we have established a robust in vivo system in which pri-miRNA is transcribed by RNAP II and processed to pre-miRNA in HeLa cell nuclear extracts. We show that both the kinetics and efficiency of pri-miRNA processin...

While mature miRNAs have been widely studied, the terminal loop sequences are rarely examined despite regulating both primary and mature miRNA functions. Herein, we attempted to understand the evolutionary pattern of loop sequences by analyzing loops in the let-7 gene family. Compared to the stable miRNA length distributions seen in most metazoans, higher metazoan species exhibit a longer lengt...

MicroRNAs (miRNA) are small RNAs that posttranscriptionally regulate gene expression, predominantly by modulating the translation and stability of target messenger RNAs [1]. Over the last 15 years, a tremendous expansion of knowledge has changed the perception of miRNAs from a rare peculiarity in nematode worms to a ubiquitous layer of gene expression regulation, with broad roles in development...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of endogenous small RNAs that play important regulatory roles in both animals and plants. miRNA genes have been intensively studied in animals, but not in plants. In this study, we adopted a homology search approach to identify homologs of previously validated plant miRNAs in Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa. We identified 20 potential miRNA genes in Arabidop...

DICER1 is essential for the generation of mature miRNAs and other short noncoding RNAs. Several lines of investigation implicate DICER1 as a tumor suppressor. Reduced DICER1 levels and changes in miRNA abundance have been associated with aggressive tumor phenotypes. The global effects of reduced DICER1 on mRNA transcript abundance in tumor cells remain largely unknown. We used short hairpin RNA...

MicroRNAs play important roles in most biological processes, including cell proliferation, tissue differentiation, and embryonic development, among others. They originate from precursor transcripts (pre-miRNAs), which contain phylogenetically conserved stem-loop structures. An important bioinformatics problem is to distinguish the pre-miRNAs from pseudo pre-miRNAs that have similar stem-loop st...