microRNA genes regulation complexity found

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NYU, Rockefeller researchers find complexity of regulation by

microRNA genes

08 Apr 2005 Medical News Today

Collaborating researchers at New York University and Rockefeller

University have discovered that microRNA genes, which have recently

been shown to have key roles in gene regulation, can team up and

regulate target genes in mammals. MicroRNAs are a recently discovered

large class of regulatory, non-coding genes, which bind to partially

complementary sites in target messenger RNA to regulate their

stability and translation. However, little has been known about the

biological function of microRNAs--a process the current study sought

to explore.

The paper, published in the latest issue of the journal Nature

Genetics, found that a microRNA gene regulates, on average, 200

different human gene transcripts and that many microRNAs can

coordinate their activities to regulate specific target genes. The

paper contains detailed genome-wide predictions for all human

microRNAs as well as tissue-specific predictions. Several predictions

were validated experimentally. The findings demonstrate an unforeseen

staggering complexity of gene regulation executed by microRNAs on a

genome-wide level.

In this study, lead author Nikolaus Rajewsky, a genomics faculty

member in NYU's Center for Comparative Functional Genomics and an

assistant professor in the Department of Biology, and the research

team developed " PicTar, " a new algorithm for the identification of

microRNA target sites in the genome and used it to compare sequences

from eight different vertebrates.

" The study demonstrates that computational methods, in conjunction

with the exploding amounts of available sequence data from different

species, have the power to not only arrive at large-scale and yet

specific, testable predictions for gene regulation, but also to

produce new general insights into how gene regulation is organized in

the genome, " says Rajewsky, who holds an affiliated appointment at

NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

Rajewsky's research program on bioinformatics predictions of

regulatory elements in genomes is being conducted at NYU's Center for

Comparative Functional Genomics, where the focus of the research

programs is to combine genomic approaches with developmental genetics

and evolution to understand how changes in genomes give rise to the

diversity of regulatory mechanisms in animals and plants.