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Novel determinants of mammalian primary microRNA processing revealed by systematic evaluation of hairpin-containing transcripts and human genetic variation

Mature microRNAs (miRNAs) are processed from hairpin-containing primary miRNAs (pri-miRNAs). However, rules that distinguish pri-miRNAs from other hairpin-containing transcripts in the genome are incompletely understood. By developing a computational pipeline to systematically evaluate 30 structural...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Roden, Christine, Gaillard, Jonathan, Kanoria, Shaveta, Rennie, William, Barish, Syndi, Cheng, Jijun, Pan, Wen, Liu, Jun, Cotsapas, Chris, Ding, Ye, Lu, Jun
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5340965/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28087842
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/gr.208900.116
Descripción
Sumario:Mature microRNAs (miRNAs) are processed from hairpin-containing primary miRNAs (pri-miRNAs). However, rules that distinguish pri-miRNAs from other hairpin-containing transcripts in the genome are incompletely understood. By developing a computational pipeline to systematically evaluate 30 structural and sequence features of mammalian RNA hairpins, we report several new rules that are preferentially utilized in miRNA hairpins and govern efficient pri-miRNA processing. We propose that a hairpin stem length of 36 ± 3 nt is optimal for pri-miRNA processing. We identify two bulge-depleted regions on the miRNA stem, located ∼16–21 nt and ∼28–32 nt from the base of the stem, that are less tolerant of unpaired bases. We further show that the CNNC primary sequence motif selectively enhances the processing of optimal-length hairpins. We predict that a small but significant fraction of human single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) alter pri-miRNA processing, and confirm several predictions experimentally including a disease-causing mutation. Our study enhances the rules governing mammalian pri-miRNA processing and suggests a diverse impact of human genetic variation on miRNA biogenesis.