Department of Integrated Biological Science, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Korea.
Institute of Systems Biology, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Korea.
Mol Cells. 2020 Jul 31;43(7):607-618. doi: 10.14348/molcells.2020.0058.
microRNAs (miRNAs) are non-coding RNA molecules involved in the regulation of gene expression. miRNAs inhibit gene expression by binding to the 3' untranslated region (UTR) of their target gene. miRNAs can originate from transposable elements (TEs), which comprise approximately half of the eukaryotic genome and one type of TE, called the long terminal repeat (LTR) is found in class of retrotransposons. Amongst the miRNAs derived from LTR, hsa-miR-3681 was chosen and analyzed using bioinformatics tools and experimental analysis. Studies on hsa-miR-3681 have been scarce and this study provides the relative expression analysis of hsa-miR-3681-5p from humans, chimpanzees, crab-eating monkeys, and mice. Luciferase assay for hsa-miR-3681-5p and its target gene supports our hypothesis that the number of miRNA binding sites affects target gene expression. Especially, the variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) and hsa-miR-3681-5p share the binding sites in the 3' UTR of , which leads the enhancer function of hsa-miR-3681-5p to inhibit the activity of VNTR. In conclusion, hsa-miR-3681-5p acts as a super-enhancer and the enhancer function of hsa-miR-3681-5p acts as a repressor of VNTR activity in the 3' UTR of .
微小 RNA（miRNA）是参与基因表达调控的非编码 RNA 分子。miRNA 通过与靶基因的 3'非翻译区（UTR）结合来抑制基因表达。miRNA 可以来源于转座元件（TEs），TEs 约占真核基因组的一半，其中一种类型的 TE 称为长末端重复（LTR），存在于反转录转座子中。在源自 LTR 的 miRNA 中，选择了 hsa-miR-3681 并使用生物信息学工具和实验分析进行了分析。对 hsa-miR-3681 的研究很少，本研究提供了来自人类、黑猩猩、食蟹猴和小鼠的 hsa-miR-3681-5p 的相对表达分析。hsa-miR-3681-5p 的荧光素酶测定及其靶基因支持我们的假设，即 miRNA 结合位点的数量影响靶基因的表达。特别是，可变数串联重复（VNTR）和 hsa-miR-3681-5p 在 3'UTR 中共享结合位点，这导致 hsa-miR-3681-5p 的增强子功能抑制 VNTR 的活性。总之，hsa-miR-3681-5p 作为超级增强子，hsa-miR-3681-5p 的增强子功能作为 3'UTR 中 VNTR 活性的抑制剂。
