Lowery Aoife J, Miller Nicola, McNeill Roisin E, Kerin Michael J
Department of Surgery, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland.
Clin Cancer Res. 2008 Jan 15;14(2):360-5. doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-07-0992.
The discovery of microRNAs (miRNA) as novel modulators of gene expression has resulted in a rapidly expanding repertoire of molecules in this family, as reflected in the concomitant expansion of scientific literature. MiRNAs are a category of naturally occurring RNA molecules that play important regulatory roles in plants and animals by targeting mRNAs for cleavage or translational repression. Characteristically, miRNAs are noncoding, single-stranded short (18-22 nucleotides) RNAs, features which possibly explain why they had not been intensively investigated until recently. Accumulating experimental evidence indicates that miRNAs play a pivotal role in many cellular functions via the regulation of gene expression. Furthermore, their dysregulation and/or mutation has been shown in carcinogenesis. We provide a brief review of miRNA biogenesis and discuss the technical challenges of modifying experimental techniques to facilitate the identification and characterization of these small RNAs. MiRNA function and their involvement in malignancy, particularly their putative role as oncogenes or tumor suppressors is also discussed, with a specific emphasis on breast cancer. Finally, we comment on the potential role of miRNAs in breast cancer management, particularly in improving current prognostic tools and achieving the goal of individualized cancer treatment.
微小RNA（miRNA）作为基因表达的新型调节因子的发现，使得该家族中的分子种类迅速增加，这一点从相关科学文献的同步增长中可见一斑。miRNA是一类天然存在的RNA分子，通过靶向mRNA进行切割或翻译抑制，在植物和动物中发挥重要的调节作用。miRNA的特点是不编码、单链短RNA（18 - 22个核苷酸），这些特性可能解释了为什么直到最近它们才得到深入研究。越来越多的实验证据表明，miRNA通过调节基因表达在许多细胞功能中起着关键作用。此外，它们的失调和/或突变已在癌症发生过程中被发现。我们简要回顾了miRNA的生物合成，并讨论了改进实验技术以促进这些小RNA的鉴定和表征所面临的技术挑战。还讨论了miRNA的功能及其在恶性肿瘤中的作用，特别是它们作为癌基因或肿瘤抑制因子的潜在作用，并特别强调了乳腺癌。最后，我们评论了miRNA在乳腺癌管理中的潜在作用，特别是在改进当前的预后工具和实现个性化癌症治疗目标方面的作用。
