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Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 648 (1 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/nrmicro1977

Viral pathogenesis: MicroRNA rides tandem

Andrew Jermy

A recent study by Sarnow and colleagues showed that a liver-specific miRNA (miR-122) was able to interact with a target sequence in the 5|[prime]| non-coding region (NCR) of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA genome and promote viral replication. Now, reporting in Cell Host & Microbe, Jopling, Sch|[uuml]|tz and Sarnow have extended their original findings by showing that miR-122 binds in tandem to two recognition sites.