Iwama Hisakazu, Masaki Tsutomu, Kuriyama Shigeki
Information Technology Center, Kagawa University, Ikenobe 1750-1, Miki-cho, Kita-gun, Kagawa 761-0793, Japan.
FEBS Lett. 2007 May 1;581(9):1805-10. doi: 10.1016/j.febslet.2007.03.066. Epub 2007 Apr 4.
A mechanism, selective avoidance, proposes that microRNA (miRNA) target sites are selectively depleted in the 3'-UTRs of genes expressed at the same time and place as a miRNA. If this mechanism is ubiquitous, the target motif occurrences in the 3'-UTRs would be decreased. To test this hypothesis, we examined miRNA target motif occurrences in the 3'- and 5'-UTRs of 20527 human protein-coding genes. The results revealed that miRNA target motifs appeared more frequently than non-target motifs and were enriched in the 3'-UTRs. This enrichment was relatively reduced in a set of 2525 genes coexpressed with miR-124a in the prefrontal cortex, but still remained at a high level, suggesting that miRNA target motifs are fostered by some other factors that surpass the influence of selective avoidance.
一种名为选择性回避的机制提出，微小RNA（miRNA）靶位点在与miRNA同时同地表达的基因的3'非翻译区（3'-UTR）中被选择性消耗。如果这种机制普遍存在，那么3'-UTR中靶基序的出现频率将会降低。为了验证这一假设，我们检测了20527个人类蛋白质编码基因的3'-UTR和5'-UTR中miRNA靶基序的出现情况。结果显示，miRNA靶基序比非靶基序出现得更频繁，并且在3'-UTR中富集。在与前额叶皮质中miR-124a共表达的一组2525个基因中，这种富集相对减少，但仍处于较高水平，这表明miRNA靶基序受到其他一些因素的促进，这些因素超过了选择性回避的影响。
