A framework for understanding the roles of miRNAs in animal development.

IF 3.6 2区生物学 Q1 DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY Development Pub Date : 2017-07-15 DOI:10.1242/dev.146613

Chiara Alberti, Luisa Cochella

引用次数: 107

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) contribute to the progressive changes in gene expression that occur during development. The combined loss of all miRNAs results in embryonic lethality in all animals analyzed, illustrating the crucial role that miRNAs play collectively. However, although the loss of some individual miRNAs also results in severe developmental defects, the roles of many other miRNAs have been challenging to uncover. This has been mostly attributed to their proposed function as tuners of gene expression or providers of robustness. Here, we present a view of miRNAs in the context of development as a hierarchical and canalized series of gene regulatory networks. In this scheme, only a fraction of embryonic miRNAs act at the top of this hierarchy, with their loss resulting in broad developmental defects, whereas most other miRNAs are expressed with high cellular specificity and play roles at the periphery of development, affecting the terminal features of specialized cells. This view could help to shed new light on our understanding of miRNA function in development, disease and evolution.

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理解mirna在动物发育中的作用的框架。

MicroRNAs (miRNAs)有助于在发育过程中发生的基因表达的进行性变化。在所分析的所有动物中，所有mirna的联合缺失导致胚胎致死，这说明了mirna共同发挥的关键作用。然而，尽管一些单个mirna的缺失也会导致严重的发育缺陷，但揭示许多其他mirna的作用仍具有挑战性。这主要归因于它们作为基因表达调节者或鲁棒性提供者的功能。在这里，我们提出了mirna在发展背景下的观点，作为一个层次和渠道的一系列基因调控网络。在这个方案中，只有一小部分胚胎mirna在这个层次的顶端起作用，它们的缺失导致广泛的发育缺陷，而大多数其他mirna以高细胞特异性表达，在发育的外围发挥作用，影响特化细胞的终端特征。这一观点有助于我们对miRNA在发育、疾病和进化中的功能有新的认识。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Development 生物-发育生物学

CiteScore

6.70

自引率

4.30%

发文量

433

审稿时长

3 months

期刊介绍： Development’s scope covers all aspects of plant and animal development, including stem cell biology and regeneration. The single most important criterion for acceptance in Development is scientific excellence. Research papers (articles and reports) should therefore pose and test a significant hypothesis or address a significant question, and should provide novel perspectives that advance our understanding of development. We also encourage submission of papers that use computational methods or mathematical models to obtain significant new insights into developmental biology topics. Manuscripts that are descriptive in nature will be considered only when they lay important groundwork for a field and/or provide novel resources for understanding developmental processes of broad interest to the community. Development includes a Techniques and Resources section for the publication of new methods, datasets, and other types of resources. Papers describing new techniques should include a proof-of-principle demonstration that the technique is valuable to the developmental biology community; they need not include in-depth follow-up analysis. The technique must be described in sufficient detail to be easily replicated by other investigators. Development will also consider protocol-type papers of exceptional interest to the community. We welcome submission of Resource papers, for example those reporting new databases, systems-level datasets, or genetic resources of major value to the developmental biology community. For all papers, the data or resource described must be made available to the community with minimal restrictions upon publication. To aid navigability, Development has dedicated sections of the journal to stem cells & regeneration and to human development. The criteria for acceptance into these sections is identical to those outlined above. Authors and editors are encouraged to nominate appropriate manuscripts for inclusion in one of these sections.