MicroRNAs研究进展

MicroRNAs是一组21-25 nt长的非编码蛋白质的短序列RNA,能通过碱基配对与mRNA分子的3′非翻译区相结合来降解mRNA或抑制靶基因的翻译。MicroRNAs的主要功能是调控基因的表达,在生物体的生长、发育及疾病发生中扮演着重要的角色。最初绝大多数microRNA都是通过大量的克隆和测序发现的,信息学只用来验证克隆的序列是否具有发夹结构,然而这些方法无法检测低丰度或组织特异性的microRNAs。目前依赖计算机的精密的microRNAs预测技术和有效的生物学鉴定技术在mi- croRNAs的识别及其功能的阐明方面起着极其重要的作用。本文主要对microRNAs的生物信息学预测及鉴定技术进行综述。

The Current Progress of MicroRNAs

MicroRNAs are short,21-25nt non-coding RNAs that induce mRNA degradation or inhibit translation of target genes by base pairing to the 3' untranslated region of target messenger RNAs,and have been shown to play a key role in gene regulation in health and disease.Initially,most micro RNAs were discovered by massive cloning and sequencing efforts,with informatics playing a limited role of verifying that the cloned sequences are part of a hairpin structure,typical of microRNA precursors,However,these ap- proaches are limited to detect low abundant microRNAs or ones which are tissue-specific.SophiSticated computer-base prediction ap- proaches of microRNAs and effective biological identification techniques for validating these predictions have been playing a central role in discovery of microRNAs and elucidating their functions This article has summarized the current bioinformatic approaches for predic- tion and identification of microRNAs.