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Resources » Paper

Allison L Abbott et al. (2002) East Coast Worm Meeting "IDENTIFICATION AND FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF microRNA GENES IN C. elegans AND D. melanogaster."

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  • Comments on Allison L Abbott et al. (2002) East Coast Worm Meeting "IDENTIFICATION AND FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF microRNA GENES IN C. elegans AND D. melanogaster." (0)

  • Overview

    Status:
    Publication type:
    Meeting_abstract
    WormBase ID:
    WBPaper00010162

    Allison L Abbott, Victor Ambros, Daniel Hopkins, David Jewell, Ann Lavanway, Rosalind C Lee, Lorenzo Sempere, Nicholas S Sokol, & Peter T Williams (2002). IDENTIFICATION AND FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF microRNA GENES IN C. elegans AND D. melanogaster presented in East Coast Worm Meeting. Unpublished information; cite only with author permission.

    lin-4 and let-7 are the founding members of a new family of regulatory RNAs, the microRNAs, many dozens of which have been identified in worms, flies and humans 1-3 . A total of 60 C. elegans microRNA genes have been published previously2,3 . In order to develop a comprehensive catalog of C. elegans miRNAs, we are continuing to identify new miRNA sequences from C. elegans cDNA libraries and from genomic sequence conservation between C. elegans and C. briggsae. So far we have identified 65 distinct new microRNA genes, bringing the total to at least 125 in worms. We confirmed the expression of all of these new microRNA genes using Northern blot analysis and are characterizing their patterns of expression during development. 47 of the new miRNA sequences occur in single copy in the C. elegans genome, while the remaining 18 sequences are found in multiple loci. Some microRNA genes are clustered, suggesting coordinate regulation by a shared promoter. Using RNA folding programs, we find that approximately 70% of these new miRNAs are predicted to be processed from stem-loop hairpin structures, like lin-4 and let-7. However, a significant portion of these miRNAs are not predicted to fold into a hairpin precursor. Interestingly, both hairpin and non-hairpin miRNAs exhibit Dicer-dependent production of the ~22nt mature miRNA. To aid in analyzing the whole family of microRNA genes, we have developed web interfaces to customized high-throughput Blast and mfold servers, and microViewer, a Java program tailored for microRNA annotation. In order to obtain mutants in microRNA genes, we are generating deletion mutations (for details, see abstract by Alvarez-Saavedra et al. ) and analyzing candidate genetic loci that map in close proximity to cloned microRNA genes. Lastly, expression profiles of microRNAs conserved between flies and worms are being compared. For example, mir-1, 2 and 87 are expressed throughout development in both flies and worms whereas mir-34 is enriched at later stages. These experiments should help elucidate the biological function of members of this new class of regulatory molecules.

    Authors: Allison L Abbott, Victor Ambros, Daniel Hopkins, David Jewell, Ann Lavanway, Rosalind C Lee, Lorenzo Sempere, Nicholas S Sokol, Peter T Williams


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