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Review
. 2012 May-Jun;3(3):351-68.
doi: 10.1002/wrna.113. Epub 2011 Nov 15.

Diversity of animal small RNA pathways and their biological utility

Katsutomo Okamura  1
Affiliations
Review

Diversity of animal small RNA pathways and their biological utility

Katsutomo Okamura. Wiley Interdiscip Rev RNA. 2012 May-Jun.

Abstract

Higher eukaryotes employ extensive post-transcriptional gene regulation to accomplish fine control of gene expression. The microRNA (miRNA) family plays important roles in the post-transcriptional gene regulation of broad networks of target mRNA expression. Most miRNAs are generated by a conserved mechanism involving two RNase III enzymes Drosha and Dicer. However, work from the past few years has uncovered diverse noncanonical miRNA pathways, which exploit a variety of other RNA processing enzymes. In addition, the discovery of another abundant small RNA family, endogenous short interfering RNAs (endo-siRNAs), has also broadened the catalogs of short regulatory RNAs. This review highlights recent studies that revealed novel small RNA biogenesis pathways, and discusses their relevance to gene regulatory networks.

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