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Insertion of microRNA-125b-1, a human homologue of lin-4, into a rearranged immunoglobulin heavy chain gene locus in a patient with precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Leukemia volume 19, pages 2009–2010 (2005)Cite this article

TO THE EDITOR

MicroRNAs (miRs) are small endogenous RNAs that have important biological functions (see for review, Bartel1 and Ambros2). The miRs are 17–25 bp, generated from longer noncoding RNAs in step-wise processes. First, primary miRs are transcribed from genomic DNA and then truncated to produce ∼70 bp of RNAs, called precursor miRs in the nucleus. Second, the precursor miRs are further cut to become mature miRs in the cytoplasm. Although the detailed mechanism remains unclear, the miRs can function as translation repressors through binding to 3′ untranslation regions of target messenger RNAs. Since many miRs highly conserve nucleotide alignments between distantly related species, it has been suggested that the small RNAs have fundamental biological roles. Accumulated results have proven that miRs participate in diverse biological processes. Examples include developmental timing, cellular asymmetry, cell growth, apoptosis and hematopoiesis.1, 2 In addition to the biological roles of miRs, a number of miRs have been found to associate with chromosome amplification, deletion and translocation sites seen in B-cell malignancies, suggesting involvements of miRs in the tumorigenesis.3, 4 In fact, a very recent report has demonstrated that an miRNA polycistron (miR-17-19b) on chromosome 13 band q31–32 can act as oncogenes.5

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by Grants-in-aid for Scientific Research from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology and Grants-in-Aid for Cancer Research from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. TS was supported by Miyajima Academic Foundation, Yatsushiro, Japan. We thank Professor Martin JS Dyer (Leicester University, UK) for critical reading of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Hematology, Kumamoto University School of Medicine, Kumamoto, Japan

    T Sonoki, E Iwanaga, H Mitsuya & N Asou

  2. Department of Hematology and Oncology, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama, Japan

    T Sonoki

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Correspondence to N Asou.

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Sonoki, T., Iwanaga, E., Mitsuya, H. et al. Insertion of microRNA-125b-1, a human homologue of lin-4, into a rearranged immunoglobulin heavy chain gene locus in a patient with precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Leukemia 19, 2009–2010 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2403938

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