Wheeler Guy, Valoczi Anna, Havelda Zoltan, Dalmay Tamas
School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom.
DNA Cell Biol. 2007 Apr;26(4):251-5. doi: 10.1089/dna.2006.0538.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are recently discovered short regulatory RNA molecules representing a new layer in posttranscriptional gene expression regulation. Although more than 450 human miRNAs have been identified, only a very few of them have been characterized in detail. The precise understanding of miRNA-mediated processes requires the reliable spatial and temporal analyses of miRNA accumulation at tissue/cell level. However, the detection of miRNAs by in situ hybridization (ISH) is technically challenging because of the small size of target sequences. It was shown recently that locked nucleic acid nucleotide-containing probes can anneal to short nucleic acids with high specificity. This enabled several research groups to analyze the expression patterns of miRNAs in both plant and animal tissues. This review focuses on the results of recent publications on the detection of miRNAs by ISH.
微小RNA(miRNA)是最近发现的短调节RNA分子,代表转录后基因表达调控的一个新层面。尽管已鉴定出450多种人类miRNA,但其中只有极少数得到了详细表征。要精确理解miRNA介导的过程,需要在组织/细胞水平对miRNA积累进行可靠的时空分析。然而,由于靶序列尺寸小,通过原位杂交(ISH)检测miRNA在技术上具有挑战性。最近有研究表明,含锁核酸核苷酸的探针能以高特异性与短核酸退火。这使得多个研究小组能够分析miRNA在植物和动物组织中的表达模式。本综述聚焦于近期有关通过ISH检测miRNA的出版物的研究结果。