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A transcription activator–like effector nuclease (TALEN)-mediated knockout approach to delete human microRNA (miRNA) genes was used to generate a library of 540 TALEN pairs for 274 miRNA loci. As a case study, single and double knockouts for two related miRNAs, miR-141 and miR-200c, revealed intriguing functional differences.
Analysis of data from The Cancer Genome Atlas generates a pan-cancer network of 143 recurrent miRNA-target relationships. The identified miRNAs were frequently regulated by genetic and epigenetic alterations in cancer. The work also reveals that some miRNAs might coordinately regulate cancer pathways, such as miR-29 regulation of TET1 and TDG mRNAs, encoding components from the active DNA demethylation pathway.
The accurate and thorough genome-wide detection of A-to-I editing has proven technically challenging. Using a combination of computational prediction and experimental validation, the authors report ~3,500 high-probability editing sites with sufficient accuracy to reveal the global patterns underlying biological functions of RNA editing in adult male Drosophila melanogaster.
Individual microRNAs (miRNAs) can target many mRNAs that form networks of presumably cooperating genes. A new study now tests this idea by screening miRNAs and their targets in the context of dedifferentiation, or reprogramming, of mouse fibroblasts to induced pluripotent stem cells. These data establish two networks of miRNA-mRNA interactions that act together to suppress early stages of reprogramming.
Measuring gene expression in individual cells is crucial for understanding the gene regulatory network controlling human embryonic development. Single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) analysis of 124 individual cells from human preimplantation embryos and embryonic stem cells (hESCs) now provides a comprehensive framework of the transcriptome landscapes of human early embryos and hESCs.
A mRNA-interactome capture approach in embryonic stem cells (ESCs) has led to the identification of 283 novel RNA-binding protein (RBP) candidates, of which 68 are preferentially expressed in ESCs. Validation of two known E3 ubiquitin ligases as RBPs reveals an intriguing potential link between RNA biology and protein-modification pathways.
By integrating the expression profiles of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) with clinical outcome and somatic copy-number alteration, the authors identified new lncRNAs that are associated with certain cancer subtypes and clinical prognoses. Experimental validation of the prostate cancer cell growth dependence of two new lncRNAs demonstrates the power of this approach for discovering disease-related lncRNAs.
