FRIDAY, Oct. 26 (HealthDay News) -- MicroRNAs, which are small molecules that post-transcriptionally regulate gene expression, are differentially expressed in various degenerative muscle conditions, researchers report in the Oct. 23 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Iris Eisenberg, Ph.D., from Children's Hospital in Boston, and colleagues examined the expression of microRNAs in muscle samples from 10 different human degenerative muscle conditions plus normal skeletal muscle.
The researchers found that 185 microRNAs were up- or down-regulated, with five consistently regulated in almost all samples. Further experiments showed that post-transcriptional regulation of the predicted targets was tightly regulated at the mRNA level in Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Miyoshi myopathy.
"The overall discovery of dysregulated microRNAs in the different diseases is expected not only to broaden our biological understanding of these diseases, but more importantly, to identify candidate microRNAs as potential targets for future clinical applications," Eisenberg and colleagues conclude.
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