 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Former project: Bonnie Bartel, Professor MicroRNAs are ~21-nucleotide regulatory RNAs that are processed from hairpin precursors by Dice-like enzymes. MicroRNAs can negatively regulate gene expression by attenuating translation, which is prevalent in animal systems, or by directing mRNA cleavage, which can occur in plants. In collaboration with the laboratory of David Bartel of the Whitehead Institute, we found that these tiny RNAs are present in plants and that regulatory targets of plant microRNAs can be reliably predicted as mRNAs with near-perfect complementarity to microRNAs. We deciphered functions of several conserved microRNA-mRNA target pairs employing the now-classic dual approach of overexpressing microRNAs to reveal loss-of-target-gene phenotypes and expressing microRNA-resistant targets from native promoters to uncover loss-of-microRNA-regulation phenotypes. We found that miR164 negatively regulates its mRNA targets to regulate organ separation; that miR160 controls ARF17 to direct auxin responses; and that miR398 can act as a translational repressor when target site complementarity is reduced. Our microRNA publications
Diana Dugas We gratefully acknowledge support for this research from the NIH and the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation.
|
