MicroRNAs (miRNAs) belong to a class of small non-coding RNAs (ribonucleic acids), approximately 22 nucleotides, that often silence the expression of protein-coding genes by binding to their messenger RNAs (mRNAs). Significant advances have been made in the discovery of miRNAs and their respective target genes as their deregulation is closely associated with several immune cell diseases, particularly cancer.
A team led by Jagan Pongubala at the department of Animal Biology, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH) has probed the genome-wide expression and functional analysis of miRNAs during lymphoid lineage commitment to demonstrates its role repressing inappropriate genes.
Absence of these miRNAs in developing lymphocytes results in a mixed-lineage gene expression pattern. The genome-wide analyses of miRNAs combined with functional studies help understand the role of miRNAs in developing lymphocytes. Collectively, these studies present the role of miRNAs during lymphoid malignancies, said a press release.
The research team included Sameena Nikhat, Anurupa D. Yadavalli, Arpita Prusty, Priyanka K. Narayan, Dasaradhi Palakodeti, Cornelis Murre, and Jagan M. R. Pongubala. The work, ‘A regulatory network of microRNAs confers lineage commitment during early developmental trajectories of B and T lymphocytes’ was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS, USA), in its latest issue .
UoH Vice-Chancellor B.J. Rao congratulated Mr Pongubala and his team for their ‘excellent’ work.
