And now introducing mammalian mirtrons.
Mirtrons are short hairpin introns recently found in flies and nematodes that provide an alternative source for animal microRNA biogenesis and use the splicing machinery to bypass Drosha cleavage in initial maturation. The presence of mirtrons outside of invertebrates was not previously known. In the October 26 issue of Molecular Cell, Berezikov et al. expose a number of short mammalian introns as mirtrons.
Chan
Shih-Peng
SP
Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208103, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
Slack
Frank J
FJ
Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208103, New Haven, CT 06520, USA. Electronic address: frank.slack@yale.edu.
D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D007438:Introns; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D012323:RNA Processing, Post-Transcriptional; D012326:RNA Splicing
D035683:MicroRNAs