MicroRNA’s were first discovered in 1993, but the name “microRNA’s” was first used in 2001, so this is a really new (and hot) topic in laboratory research. For years scientists thought that genes and proteins were the major players in the body. Genes and proteins were the things that went wrong when you developed cancer, but research on microRNAs is starting to change that.
I think we’ll discover that a lot of the cancers that are hard to treat now have faults in their micro RNAs and as we do more research we’ll find ways of altering microRNAS in people (as well as in the lab). There is a new article out in the American Journal Science describing the “Genomic Loss of miR 101” in prostate cancer. You need to pay to read the article and it’s technical, but they showed that low levels of miR 101 were found in prostate and breast cancer and these cancers were more aggressive (spread quickly and were hard to treat).
So just what is a microRNA? Well, as the name suggests it’s small, about 18-22 nucleotides. RNA is like DNA, but different! DNA and RNA are both nucleic acids (which is what the NA bit means). The D in DNA stands for “deoxyribose” whereas the R in RNA stands for “Ribo”. Chemically it means that RNA has an -OH (hydroxyl group) and DNA does not.
DNA is usually a double strand (drawn with two lines) and RNA is usually a single strand (drawn with one line). See the picture below.
A microRNA tends to curl up on itself. DNA has a genetic code of chemicals called A, T , C and G. RNA has a genetic code of chemicals called A, U, C and G. DNA is pretty stable and lasts a long time (i.e. centuries), RNA breaks down very easily (often in minutes).
Most of the articles on micro RNAs and cancer are very technical, there aren’t any microRNA treatments for cancer yet. If you want to read more there is a short, 2 page article in Nature from 2005 called “small RNAs with big impacts” and this blog “Science and Reason” has up to date links on different microRNAs and cancer. If I find out about any clinical (hospital) uses of microRNAs then I’ll post about it in my “News” section, so watch this space.
[...] p15 by it’s antisense RNA (Yu et al. Jan 10 2008). I’ve written other blog posts about antisense RNA/RNAi and I think more and more research is going to show that RNA is just as important as DNA. The paper [...]
[...] have previously written about microRNAs on this website (see November 2008 microRNAs and cancer) and the difficulties of developing new drugs (see July 2009 In the Pipeline – How do you find new [...]
[...] name suggests, little bits of RNA (RNA is like DNA but different, read my earlier post on “microRNA’s and cancer – The science bit” if you want to know [...]