TITLE:
Identification of regulatory sequence signatures in microRNA precursors implicated in neurological disorders
AUTHORS:
Sayak Ganguli, Sasti Gopal Das, Hirak Jyoti Chakraborty, Sohini Gupta, Abhijit Datta
KEYWORDS:
Neurological Diseases; Regulatory Motif Signatures; Parkinson’s Disease; Alzheimer’s Disease; Huntington Disease
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology,
Vol.4 No.5A,
May
27,
2013
ABSTRACT: MicroRNAs have emerged as one of the major classes of
non-coding RNAs. Recent reports have placed them in high abundance in the
nervous system, having key roles in development. Neurological disorders such
as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease as well as Huntington disease have
also been studied and several microRNAs associated with diseases pathogenesis
have been identified. Various such findings indicate differential expression
levels of many of these microRNAs. Such changes in the expression levels not
only indicate towards a control of the biogenesis of these microRNAs but also
indicate towards critical yet unelucidated roles of regulatory proteins, which
probably act in concert to control the production or maturation of these
molecules. In this work, a collection of overrepresented regulatory motif
signatures were identified in the DNA and RNA sequences of the precursor
microRNAs. The identification of such regulatory sequence signatures promises
to provide new insights into many facets of microRNA regulation and
neurological disorders.