title: Bone morphogenetic protein-2 down-regulates miR-206 expression by blocking its maturation process.
abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that are emerging as important post-transcriptional gene regulators. miR-206 is unique in that it is expressed only in skeletal muscle, including the myoblastic C2C12 cell line. In C2C12 cells, miR-206 expression was reduced dramatically after bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-2 treatment. The down-regulation of miR-206 expression was also observed after co-transfection with constitutively-active Smad1 and Smad4, which are the intracellular signaling molecules of the BMP pathway. BMP-2 also reduced miR-206 expression in the presence of alpha-amanitin in a similar manner to that in the absence of alpha-amanitin. Moreover, the expression of pri-miR-206 was increased upon BMP-2 treatment for 6h compared to that in the absence of BMP-2. These results suggested that BMP-2 down-regulates miR-206 expression at the post-transcriptional level, by inhibiting the processing of pri-miR-206 into mature miR-206, and that BMP-2 could regulate miRNA biogenesis by a novel mechanism.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
authors.forename: Mari M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.forename: Masayuki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nashimoto
authors.forename: Takenobu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Katagiri
authors.forename: Yasutaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yawaka
authors.forename: Masato
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tamura