An Extensive Class of Small RNAs in Caenorhabditis elegans

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - Tập 294 Số 5543 - Trang 862-864 - 2001
Rosalind C. Lee1, Victor Ambros1
1Dartmouth Medical School, Department of Genetics, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.

Tóm tắt

The lin-4 and let-7 antisense RNAs are temporal regulators that control the timing of developmental events in Caenorhabditis elegans by inhibiting translation of target mRNAs. let-7 RNA is conserved among bilaterian animals, suggesting that this class of small RNAs [microRNAs (miRNAs)] is evolutionarily ancient. Using bioinformatics and cDNA cloning, we found 15 new miRNA genes in C. elegans. Several of these genes express small transcripts that vary in abundance during C. elegans larval development, and three of them have apparent homologs in mammals and/or insects. Small noncoding RNAs of the miRNA class appear to be numerous and diverse.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

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Other cDNAs corresponded to lin-4 let-7 and miscellaneous fragments of ribosomal RNAs tRNAs or mRNAs.

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We thank A. Lee for computer programming M. McCarthy for worm staging D. Jewell for helping with BLAST searches the Sanger Center for C. briggsae genomic sequence and W. J. Kent's Intronerator Web site for presorted worm sequences. We are also grateful to A. Grishok and C. Mello for the dcr-1 strain and to T. Tuschl and D. Bartel for sharing data prior to publication. This work was supported by NIH grant R01 GM-34028 to V.A.