What does miR 122 do?

miR-122 regulates the synthesis of the protein CAT-1 by binding to sites in the mRNA 3’UTR such that translation is repressed and the mRNA is targeted to P bodies. This repression can be relieved by the protein HuR, which is released from the nucleus under conditions of cell stress and binds to the CAT-1 3’UTR.

How do you name miRNA?

Typically, both the gene locus and precursor miRNA (pre-miRNA) of a miRNA is referred as “mir”, while the mature miRNA product is designated “miR”. When miRNAs are closely related in terms of their sequence, they are given additional suffixes in form of numbers and letters to distinguish them (e.g. mir-33 or mir-4990).

What is difference between siRNA and miRNA?

Origin: The siRNA is an exogenous double-stranded RNA uptaken by cells, while miRNA is single-stranded and comes from endogenous non-coding RNA. Besides, the siRNA is present in lower animals and plants, but not found in mammals; whereas miRNAs are present in all the animal and plant.

What is HSA miRNA?

The “hsa” tells us it is a human miRNA. The “20″ tells us that was discovered early — it’s only the 20th family that was named. “20b” tells us that it is related to another miRNA that we can guess is probably called hsa-mir-20a.

Why is miRNA better than siRNA?

The major difference between siRNAs and miRNAs is that the former inhibit the expression of one specific target mRNA while the latter regulate the expression of multiple mRNAs. Soon after its discovery, miRNA was quickly found to be a class of small RNA molecules that negatively regulate gene expression (Figure 1).

Are siRNAs microRNAs?

Discovered a little over two decades ago, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) are noncoding RNAs with important roles in gene regulation. The major difference between siRNAs and miRNAs is that the former are highly specific with only one mRNA target, whereas the latter have multiple targets.

Where is microRNA found?

While the majority of miRNAs are located within the cell, some miRNAs, commonly known as circulating miRNAs or extracellular miRNAs, have also been found in extracellular environment, including various biological fluids and cell culture media.