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Sex differences in microRNA regulation of gene expression: no smoke, just miRs

Males and females differ widely in morphology, physiology, and behavior leading to disparities in many health outcomes, including sex biases in the prevalence of many neurodevelopmental disorders. However, with the exception of a relatively small number of genes on the Y chromosome, males and female...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Morgan, Christopher P, Bale, Tracy L
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3507674/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23009289
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2042-6410-3-22
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author Morgan, Christopher P
Bale, Tracy L
author_facet Morgan, Christopher P
Bale, Tracy L
author_sort Morgan, Christopher P
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description Males and females differ widely in morphology, physiology, and behavior leading to disparities in many health outcomes, including sex biases in the prevalence of many neurodevelopmental disorders. However, with the exception of a relatively small number of genes on the Y chromosome, males and females share a common genome. Therefore, sexual differentiation must in large part be a product of the sex biased expression of this shared genetic substrate. microRNAs (miRs) are small non-coding RNAs involved in the post-transcriptional regulation of up to 70% of protein-coding genes. The ability of miRs to regulate such a vast amount of the genome with a high degree of specificity makes them perfectly poised to play a critical role in programming of the sexually dimorphic brain. This review describes those characteristics of miRs that make them particularly amenable to this task, and examines the influences of both the sex chromosome complement as well as gonadal hormones on their regulation. Exploring miRs in the context of sex differences in disease, particularly in sex-biased neurodevelopmental disorders, may provide novel insight into the pathophysiology and potential therapeutic targets in disease treatment and prevention.
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spelling pubmed-35076742012-11-28 Sex differences in microRNA regulation of gene expression: no smoke, just miRs Morgan, Christopher P Bale, Tracy L Biol Sex Differ Review Males and females differ widely in morphology, physiology, and behavior leading to disparities in many health outcomes, including sex biases in the prevalence of many neurodevelopmental disorders. However, with the exception of a relatively small number of genes on the Y chromosome, males and females share a common genome. Therefore, sexual differentiation must in large part be a product of the sex biased expression of this shared genetic substrate. microRNAs (miRs) are small non-coding RNAs involved in the post-transcriptional regulation of up to 70% of protein-coding genes. The ability of miRs to regulate such a vast amount of the genome with a high degree of specificity makes them perfectly poised to play a critical role in programming of the sexually dimorphic brain. This review describes those characteristics of miRs that make them particularly amenable to this task, and examines the influences of both the sex chromosome complement as well as gonadal hormones on their regulation. Exploring miRs in the context of sex differences in disease, particularly in sex-biased neurodevelopmental disorders, may provide novel insight into the pathophysiology and potential therapeutic targets in disease treatment and prevention. BioMed Central 2012-09-26 /pmc/articles/PMC3507674/ /pubmed/23009289 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2042-6410-3-22 Text en Copyright ©2012 Morgan and Bale; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Review
Morgan, Christopher P
Bale, Tracy L
Sex differences in microRNA regulation of gene expression: no smoke, just miRs
title Sex differences in microRNA regulation of gene expression: no smoke, just miRs
title_full Sex differences in microRNA regulation of gene expression: no smoke, just miRs
title_fullStr Sex differences in microRNA regulation of gene expression: no smoke, just miRs
title_full_unstemmed Sex differences in microRNA regulation of gene expression: no smoke, just miRs
title_short Sex differences in microRNA regulation of gene expression: no smoke, just miRs
title_sort sex differences in microrna regulation of gene expression: no smoke, just mirs
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3507674/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23009289
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2042-6410-3-22
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