Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword by Sidney Altman
- Foreword by Victor R. Ambros
- Introduction
- I Discovery of microRNAs in various organisms
- II MicroRNA functions and RNAi-mediated pathways
- III Computational biology of microRNAs
- IV Detection and quantitation of microRNAs
- 17 Detection and analysis of microRNAs using LNA (locked nucleic acid)-modified probes
- 18 Detection and quantitation of microRNAs using the RNA Invader® assay
- 19 A single molecule method to quantify miRNA gene expression
- 20 Real-time quantification of microRNAs by TaqMan® assays
- 21 Real-time quantification of miRNAs and mRNAs employing universal reverse transcription
- V MicroRNAs in disease biology
- VI MicroRNAs in stem cell development
- Index
- Plate section
- References
17 - Detection and analysis of microRNAs using LNA (locked nucleic acid)-modified probes
from IV - Detection and quantitation of microRNAs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword by Sidney Altman
- Foreword by Victor R. Ambros
- Introduction
- I Discovery of microRNAs in various organisms
- II MicroRNA functions and RNAi-mediated pathways
- III Computational biology of microRNAs
- IV Detection and quantitation of microRNAs
- 17 Detection and analysis of microRNAs using LNA (locked nucleic acid)-modified probes
- 18 Detection and quantitation of microRNAs using the RNA Invader® assay
- 19 A single molecule method to quantify miRNA gene expression
- 20 Real-time quantification of microRNAs by TaqMan® assays
- 21 Real-time quantification of miRNAs and mRNAs employing universal reverse transcription
- V MicroRNAs in disease biology
- VI MicroRNAs in stem cell development
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Introduction
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are an abundant class of short endogenous RNAs that act as post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression by base-pairing with their target mRNAs. To date more than 3500 microRNAs have been annotated in vertebrates, invertebrates and plants according to the miRBase microRNA database release 8.0 in February 2006 (Griffiths-Jones, 2004; Griffiths-Jones et al., 2006), and many miRNAs that correspond to putative genes have also been identified. The miRNAs identified to date represent most likely the tip of the iceberg, and the number of miRNAs might turn out to be very large. Recent bioinformatic predictions combined with array analyses, small RNA cloning and Northern blot validation indicate that the total number of miRNAs in vertebrate genomes is significantly higher than previously estimated and maybe as many as 1000 (Bentwich et al., 2005; Berezikov et al., 2005; Xie et al., 2005). An increasing body of research shows that animal miRNAs play fundamental biological roles in cell growth and apoptosis (Brennecke et al., 2003), hematopoietic lineage differentiation (Chen et al., 2004), life-span regulation (Boehm and Slack, 2005), photoreceptor differentiation (Li and Carthew, 2005), homeobox gene regulation (Yekta et al., 2004; Hornstein et al., 2005), neuronal asymmetry (Johnston and Hobert, 2003), insulin secretion (Poy et al., 2004), brain morphogenesis (Giraldez et al., 2005), muscle proliferation and differentiation (Chan et al., 2005; Kwon et al., 2005; Sokol and Ambros, 2005), cardiogenesis (Zhao et al., 2005) and late embryonic development in vertebrates (Wienholds et al., 2005).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- MicroRNAsFrom Basic Science to Disease Biology, pp. 229 - 241Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007