After several Weekend Roundup posts in a row about “big picture” issues like the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of the smartphones on our brains, and improving scientific communication, I’m going to take a beat to focus on a narrower topic: microRNA. This is also a chance to do something I haven’t done before and explain some of my own research.1
What ARE microRNA???
microRNA, as the name implies, are small molecules made of—you guessed it!—RNA. Researchers discovered that this class of nucleic acids had powerful control over embryo development in small invertebrates like the worm Caenorhabditis elegans in the 1990s. Soon, microRNA (sometimes called miRNA or miRs, produced “meers”) were discovered in virtually all species more complicated than bacteria, including plants, fungi, and all mammals. Adding to the intrigue, these molecules often had identical sequences of nucleotides (A, G, T, and C) in species as diverse as fruit flies, mice, and humans. Clearly, their functions were critical …
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