miRNA Sponge Technology

Abstract

MiRNA Sponge technology is an innovative approach used to generate RNAs containing multiple, tandem binding sites for a miRNA seed family of interest and able to target all members of that miRNA seed family. When vectors encoding the miRNA sponges are transiently transfected into cultured cells, they depress miRNA targets as strongly as the conventional AMOs described in Chap. 6. The major advancement of this technique over the AMO technique is that it can better inhibit functional classes of miRNAs than do AMOs that are designed to block single miRNA sequences. The main principle of the miRNA Sponge technology is identical to the MT-AMO technology described in Chap. 7: targeting multiple miRNAs. The miRNA Sponge technology was established by Sharp's laboratory in 2007 [Ebert MS, Neilson JR, Sharp PA, Nat Methods 4:721–726 2007; Hammond SM Nat Methods 4:694–695, 2007]. Similar to the AMO approach, miRNA Sponge technology belongs to the “targeting-miRNA” and “miRNA-loss-of-function” strategy. The miRNA Sponge technology complies with the ‘Single-Drug, Multiple-Target’ [Gao H, Xiao J, Sun Q, Lin H, Bai Y, Yang L, Yang B, Wang H, Wang Z, Mol Pharmacol, 70:1621–1629, 2006] and ‘miRNA Seed Family’ concepts (see Sect. 2.1.4 for detail).