The Role of Micro RNAs in Gene Regulation

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Micro RNAs (miRNA’s) are created from microgenes and are a molecule that is aproximetly 22 base pairs in length, they are thought to coordinate the expression of genes that are protein coding in eukaryotes. Over 1000 have been discovered and they seem to compromise a secondary level of control that is likely to coordinate the genome function in humans and other complex organisms (Elliot and Elliot)

It is also known that these miRNA help initiate the degradation of mRNA and prevent the translation of mRNA into protein through a process known as RNA interference. (Pierce, Benjamin A). There is a miRNA- induced silencing complex (miRISC) which links up with mature miRNA. This forms a complex which blocks translation via the binding to mRNA, (Phillips ,Theresa) miRNAs are able to target up to several hundred genes through binding to different regions and imperfect base pairing. (Larson, Richard A)

miRNAs are a class of non-coding RNAs that regulate the expression of genes by binding to complementary regions; this is done commonly with the 3’UTR of target mRNA resulting in mRNA degradation and translational repression.(Goodal). Bound to an argonaute protein all miRNAs require this for miRNA function( Nilsen, Timothy W.

Gene regulation is the process of turning on and off the genes in our cells as they are required. This is needed as every cell in our bodies has a complete set of the genome, and the difference between cells is what genes are being expressed and not expressed within them. The differentiation between cells is due to different regulatory elements. (Yoon, Wan Hee) This differentiation is due to gene regulation which occurs at the level of transcription in the cells. Operons promoters and repressors are all strong...

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...illiam H Elliot and Daphne C Elliot

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