The muscle-specific microRNA miR-1 stimulates translation of various transcripts encoded by mitochondrial DNA, while repressing its nuclear DNA-encoded targets in the cytoplasm, report Zhang and colleagues. The observed effect is dependent on specific base-pairing between miR-1 and its target transcripts, as well as on the presence of Argonaute 2 (AGO2), which was shown by crosslinking and immunoprecipitation coupled with deep sequencing (CLIP–seq) to bind to the transcripts directly. The authors propose that AGO2 functions as a key mitochondrial translation initiation factor to facilitate ribosome–mRNA interactions.
References
Zhang, X. et al. MicroRNA directly enhances mitochondrial translation during muscle differentiation. Cell http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.05.047 (2014)
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Koch, L. MicroRNA stimulates mitochondrial translation. Nat Rev Genet 15, 572 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3806
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3806