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7 February 2009 | By
For plants and invertebrates, RNA interference is firmly established as an important antiviral mechanism. Even before Fire, Mello, and co-workers described RNA interference (RNAi) in worms in 19981 it was becoming clear that plants have an RNA-dependent pathway that protects against viral infections2. The pathway, then termed post-transcriptional gene silencing…
3 December 2008 | By
Recently, small RNAs such as microRNAs (miRNAs) have been demonstrated to be important regulators in both plants and animals. In animals miRNAs act as translational repressors of target genes through a combination of inhibition of translation and mRNA destabilisation. These molecules have been implicated in a multitude of diseases, including…
29 September 2008 | By Russell Grocock, Principle Bioinformatics Scientist, GSK
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small (~21nucleotides), evolutionarily conserved, noncoding RNA molecules that regulate gene expression1. In mammalian genomes, conservative predictions suggest that between 500-1500 miRNAs exist. There miRNAs appear to be capable of regulating the expression of multiple genes, with many genes appearing to be regulated by multiple, different, miRNAs2. Less…
29 September 2008 | By
On 3-4 November GeneExpression Systems, Inc., USA and the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom jointly present the Third International MicroRNA Europe 2008 Meeting on MicroRNAs: Biology to Development and Disease. 30 speakers will present the latest developments in the microRNA field. 20 poster presentations and 20 exhibit booths will also…
2 August 2008 | By
European Pharmaceutical Review speaks to Søren Morgenthaler Echwald, Vice President of Business Development at Exiqon regarding new developments in microRNA.
19 June 2008 | By
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNA molecules, which are potent post-transcriptional gene expression regulators. They have been shown to participate in the regulation of numerous cellular processes, the list of which is still growing. miRNAs affect numerous targets that can be determined by direct experiments or predicted…
23 November 2007 | By
Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) consist of a growing heterogeneous class of transcripts defined as RNA molecules that lack any extensive “Open Reading Frame” (ORF) and function as structural, catalytic or regulatory entities rather than serving as templates for protein synthesis. While non-coding sequences make up only a small fraction of the…
23 November 2007 | By
Alteration of microRNA (miRNA) expression in a disease compared to a healthy state and/or correlation of miRNA expression with clinical parameters (like disease progression or therapy response), may indicate that miRNAs can serve as clinically relevant biomarkers1-3. An important first step for further functional characterisation is the information about differential…
21 September 2007 | By Eric A. Miska, The Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute and Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Over the last ten years a small RNA revolution has swept biology. In 1998 RNA interference (RNAi) was discovered as an experimental tool by Andy Fire and Craig Mello, a finding that was awarded with the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Although the biology of RNAi is still…
21 July 2007 | By Dr. Neil Clarke and Dr. Mark Edbrooke, GlaxoSmithKline Research and Development, Hertfordshire, UK
The archetypal microRNAs, lin-4 and let-7, were discovered in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans over a decade ago and, at that time, no one would have predicted that they would be anything other than an interesting feature of worm developmental biology. However, in recent years there has been an explosion…
