Hypothesis: RNA editing of microRNA target sites in humans?
Abstract
Adenosine (A) to inosine (I) RNA editing occurs widely in the human transcriptome, and a large proportion of editing sites are within untranslated regions (UTRs). MicroRNAs (miRNAs), an abundant class of regulatory genes, specify the expression of a large number of target genes by pairing to their 3′ UTRs. To study the interplay between these two post-transcriptional events, we developed a computational pipeline to integrate sequence and miRNA tissue specificity data. The results show that some A-to-I RNA editing positions have a potential to block the miRNA:target recognition, although further computational simulation suggests that RNA editing tends to avoid miRNA target sites in general. We propose that a small proportion of RNA editing events may provide an additional layer of control on miRNA-mediated repression. Further investigation is needed to elucidate the functional effect of these special RNA editing events.
Keywords
Footnotes
-
↵3 Present address: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, 1101 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
-
Reprint requests to: Laura F. Landweber, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA; e-mail: lfl{at}princeton.edu; fax: (609) 258-7892.
-
Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.rnajournal.org/cgi/doi/10.1261/rna.296407.
-
- Received September 6, 2006.
- Accepted December 18, 2006.
- Copyright © 2007 RNA Society