biogenesis and mechanism of action of small non-coding rnas insights from the point of view of structural biology生物起源和小非编码rna的作用机制的见解从结构生物学的观点.pdf

Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2012, 13, 10268-10295; doi:10.3390/ijms130810268 OPEN ACCESS International Journal of Molecular Sciences ISSN 1422-0067 /journal/ijms Review Biogenesis and Mechanism of Action of Small Non-Coding RNAs: Insights from the Point of View of Structural Biology Marina C. Costa 1, Ana Lúcia Leitão 2 and Francisco J. Enguita 1,* 1 Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Prof. Egas Moniz, Lisboa 1649-028, Portugal; E-Mail: marinacosta@fm.ul.pt 2 Departamento de Ciências e Tecnologia da Biomassa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus da Caparica, Caparica 2829-516, Portugal; E-Mail: aldl@fct.unl.pt * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: fenguita@fm.ul.pt; Tel.: +351-21-7999503; Fax: +351-21-7999412. Received: 30 May 2012; in revised form: 17 July 2012 / Accepted: 2 August 2012 / Published: 17 August 2012 Abstract: Non-coding RNAs are dominant in the genomic output of the higher organisms being not simply occasional transcripts with idiosyncratic functions, but constituting an extensive regulatory network. Among all the species of non-coding RNAs, small non-coding RNAs (miRNAs, siRNAs and piRNAs) have been shown to be in the core of the regulatory machinery of all the genomic output in eukaryotic cells. Small non-coding RNAs are produced by several pathways containing specialized enzymes that process RNA transcripts.