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MicroRNA expression profiles of human leukemias

Leukemia volume 22, pages 1274–1278 (2008)Cite this article

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs of 20–24 nucleotides (nt) that negatively regulate the translation of target mRNAs through incomplete base-pairing with their 3′-untranslated regions.1 Evidence indicates that miRNAs play an important role in the development of human cancers including leukemias, with one of the most well-characterized examples being association of miR-15a and miR-16a with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Almost half of chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients harbor a chromosome deletion that encompasses 13q14, a region that includes the genes for miR-15a and miR-16a, and the abundance of these miRNAs is reduced in chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells with the chromosome deletion.2 Several other miRNAs, such as miR-155 and miR-17-92, have also been implicated in the pathogenesis of lymphoma.3 It is therefore important that the entire miRNA repertoire of clinical specimens be characterized and compared among various hematologic malignancies.

Reliable assessment of the global expression profiles of miRNAs, especially for the small amounts of clinical specimens available, is not straightforward, however. Microarray-based detection of miRNAs is prone to the generation of false-positive data that may result from mishybridization of probes, although improvements have recently been developed for this technology.4 A large-scale cloning strategy would be an ideal approach to reliable estimation of the expression level of miRNAs, provided that a sufficient number of clones were to be analyzed. However, conventional methods for isolation of miRNAs require >10 μg of total RNA, which is not always obtainable from clinical specimens.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported in part by a grant for Third-Term Comprehensive Control Research for Cancer from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare of Japan as well as by a grant for Scientific Research on Priority Areas ‘Applied Genomics’ from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Functional Genomics, Jichi Medical University, Shimotsukeshi, Tochigi, Japan

    S Takada, Y Yamashita, H Hatanaka, S-i Fujiwara, K Kurashina, H Watanabe, M Enomoto, M Soda, Y L Choi & H Mano

  2. Hubrecht Institute, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    E Berezikov

  3. CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Saitama, Japan

    H Mano

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  1. S Takada
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Correspondence to H Mano.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Leukemia website (http://www.nature.com/leu)

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Takada, S., Yamashita, Y., Berezikov, E. et al. MicroRNA expression profiles of human leukemias. Leukemia 22, 1274–1278 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2405031

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