MicroRNAs assume a developmental role

Credit: © 2004 NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP" /> Credit: © 2004 NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP With all the hubbub surrounding microRNAs in plants and invertebrates after their discovery, it was only a matter of time before a functional role was found in mammals. In 2004, graduate student Soraya Yekta, and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research member David Bartel found a role for microRNA miR-196 in HOXB8 regulation in mice.1 Naturally, it was assumed such a mechanism would exist in mammals. But

Jeffrey M. Perkel

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With all the hubbub surrounding microRNAs in plants and invertebrates after their discovery, it was only a matter of time before a functional role was found in mammals. In 2004, graduate student Soraya Yekta, and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research member David Bartel found a role for microRNA miR-196 in HOXB8 regulation in mice.1 Naturally, it was assumed such a mechanism would exist in mammals. But, says Victor Ambros, microRNA pioneer at Dartmouth Medical School, "Nothing about microRNAs is particularly expected, so it really is important to actually find these situations."

Yekta and colleagues demonstrated that in 15-to-17-day old mouse embryos HOXB8 mRNA is cleaved precisely 10 nucleotides from the 5' end of the miR-196 complementarity sequence. Recently Bartel, with Cliff Tabin of Harvard Medical School, showed that miR-196 expression, limited to the hindlimb, blocks induction of HOXB8 by retinoic acid.2 But miRNA isn't the gene's only regulator; transcription appears ...

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