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Reply to Lack of detectable oral bioavailability of plant microRNAs after feeding in mice

Nature Biotechnology volume 31, pages 967–969 (2013)Cite this article

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Xi Chen, Ke Zen and Chen-Yu Zhang reply:

We agree with Dickinson et al.1 that follow-up studies to carefully evaluate the uptake of food-derived microRNAs (miRNAs) and the potential of cross-kingdom gene regulation in animals are urgently required. However, we disagree with the conclusions of Dickinson et al.1 that nutritional differences in diet composition, rather than cross-kingdom gene regulation by plant miRNAs, are likely responsible for alterations in plasma low-density lipoprotein (LDL) following rice consumption. We feel that these authors fail to address several critical issues in detecting plant miRNAs in mouse plasma and liver samples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Xi Chen, Ke Zen and Chen-Yu Zhang are at the Jiangsu Engineering Research Center for MicroRNA Biology and Biotechnology, State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.,

    Xi Chen, Ke Zen & Chen-Yu Zhang

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  1. Xi Chen
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  2. Ke Zen
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  3. Chen-Yu Zhang
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Correspondence to Ke Zen or Chen-Yu Zhang.

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Chen, X., Zen, K. & Zhang, CY. Reply to Lack of detectable oral bioavailability of plant microRNAs after feeding in mice. Nat Biotechnol 31, 967–969 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2741

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