Highlights from this Issue

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 78 KB
• Volume: 31
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0265-9247
• DOI: 10.1002/bies.200990037

✦ Synopsis

SNPing the RNAi connection

RNA interference is one of the 'rising stars' in biology, being used as a universal tool in molecular biology, less than a decade after its discovery. It has been shown that miRNA regulates gene, RNA and protein expression in most, if not all, organisms. However, the exact roles and various functions of miRNA are not yet clear. It is proposed in this issue that miRNA may also be involved in differential expression of one allele in a cell. This phenomenon is claimed to be the cause of incomplete penetrance, or variable expression (IP/VE) of disease genes, which results in differing phenotypes for a variety of dominantly inherited diseases. It seems at first, highly counterintuitive that miRNA can be responsible for differential allelic expression, since miRNA recognition sequences are not considered very gene specific. However, the