miRNA, piRNA, siRNA—kleine wiener ribonukleinsäuren

✍ Scribed by Helge Grosshans; Petr Svoboda

• Book ID: 101710709
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 46 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0265-9247
• DOI: 10.1002/bies.20631

✦ Synopsis

RNA silencing is a generic term for a group of pathways that utilize short RNA molecules to achieve sequencespecific gene repression, often post-transcriptionally. During three days in May 2007, around 200 scientists working on RNA silencing met at IMBA, Vienna for the 2 nd Microsymposium on Small RNAs organized by Javier Martinez.

At the beginning of the meeting, Alberto Kornblihtt (University of Buenos Aires) provided a perspective on the diversity of mechanisms governed by RNA molecules, explaining in his keynote lecture mechanisms of alternative RNA splicing. In subsequent presentations on RNA silencing, three major themes emerged: (1) characterization of the RNA silencing machineries and identification of their components, with particular emphasis on the microRNA pathway, (2) prediction and characterization of microRNA targets, and (3) characterization of piRNAs, one of the latest additions to the growing family of small RNAs.