Eurekalert:

"What we found was that, in certain cases, edited versions of these microRNAs are being produced that differ from the unedited versions by only a single nucleotide change," says Kazuko Nishikura, Ph.D., a professor in the Gene Expression and Regulation Program at Wistar and senior author on the study.

"These edited microRNAs are not encoded in the DNA, which means that at least two versions can being produced by one gene. This was not anticipated - it was something really new.

Looking more closely, we realized that the substitution we'd identified occurred in a particularly critical region of the molecule, the first 7 or 8 nucleotides - out of a total of only 19 or 21 - that define the molecule's target specificity. This suggested that the change might well redirect these edited microRNAs to silence entirely different sets of genes from the unedited versions."

Labels: Genetics