 PLoS One. 2010; 5(4): e10162. Published online 2010 April 14.
doi:  10.1371/journal.pone.0010162 PMCID: PMC2854686   Simon
Rogers, Editor     Methodology/Principal Findings      MicroRNAs
(miRNAs) are small endogenous regulatory RNAs, present in a wide
variety of eukaryotic organisms. They are incorporated into an
RNA induced silencing complex (RISC) that binds to sites of
variable complementarity in target messenger RNAs, triggering
their degradation and/or repressing their translation [1].
Evidence for the participation of miRNAs in cell growth, cell
differentiation and cancer is currently piling up. Nearly half
of the annotated human miRNAs map within fragile chromosomal
regions, which are areas associated with various types of human
cancers. Recent evidence indicates that miRNAs as well as the
factors that participate in miRNA biogenesis may function as
tumor suppressors and/or oncogenes [2]. According to the latest
miRBase repository release [3], there are >700 human mature
miRNA sequences identified wi