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Biogenesis and Function Mechanisms of Micro-RNAs and Their Role as Oncogenes and Tumor Suppressors

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Systems Biology

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Micro-RNAs (miRNAs) are evolutionarily conserved small noncoding RNAs (20– 23 nucleotides). MiRNAs regulate various physiological pathways such as differentiation, proliferation, and apoptosis by negative regulation of the gene expressions at the posttranscriptional level [1–3]. Currently, more than 800 human miRNAs have been identified and registered in the miRNA database miRBase [4]. Strikingly, 30% of protein-coding transcripts in humans is predicted to be regulated by miR-NAs [5,6]. Recently, miRNAs have been reported to work as oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes and be directly involved in the initiation, progression, and metastasis of various cancers [7–9]. Therefore, we focus on the role that miRNAs play in cancer and the use of miRNAs in drug discovery. Collection of evidence suggests that miRNAs can be potentially useful for understanding tumorigenesis and finding novel strategies for cancer diagnosis and therapy.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nanobio Drug Discovery, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Soken Tsuchiya, Fumiaki Sato & Kazuharu Shimizu

  2. Department of Genomic Drug Discovery Science, Kyoto University, 46–29 Yoshida Shimoadachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan

    Kazuya Terasawa & Gozoh Tsujimoto

  3. Department of PharmacoInformatics, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Ryo Kunimoto & Yasushi Okuno

Authors
  1. Soken Tsuchiya
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  2. Kazuya Terasawa
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  3. Ryo Kunimoto
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  4. Yasushi Okuno
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  5. Fumiaki Sato
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  6. Kazuharu Shimizu
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  7. Gozoh Tsujimoto
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Osaka Bioscience Institute, Osaka, 565-0874, Japan

    Shigetada Nakanishi

  2. Institute for Virus Research, Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8507, Japan

    Ryoichiro Kageyama

  3. Department of Biological Sciences Faculty of Medicine, and Department of Molecular and System Biology, Graduate School of Biostudies Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan

    Dai Watanabe

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© 2009 Springer

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Tsuchiya, S. et al. (2009). Biogenesis and Function Mechanisms of Micro-RNAs and Their Role as Oncogenes and Tumor Suppressors. In: Nakanishi, S., Kageyama, R., Watanabe, D. (eds) Systems Biology. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-87704-2_19

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