Volume 22, No 3, Mar 2012

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 22 Issue 3, March 2012: 504-515

ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Mouse miRNA-709 directly regulates miRNA-15a/16-1 biogenesis at the posttranscriptional level in the nucleus: evidence for a microRNA hierarchy system

Rui Tang^1,2,3,*, Limin Li^1,*, Dihan Zhu¹, Dongxia Hou¹, Ting Cao¹, Hongwei Gu¹, Jing Zhang¹, Junyuan Chen², Chen-Yu Zhang¹ and Ke Zen¹

¹Jiangsu Engineering Research Center for microRNA Biology and Biotechnology, State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China
²Marine Biology Lab, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China
³Current address: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30084, USA Correspondence: Ke Zen, Chen-Yu Zhang, Junyuan Chen,(kzen@nju.edu.cn; cyzhang@nju.edu.cn; chenjunyuan@163.net)

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous noncoding RNAs (~22 nt) that regulate target gene expression at the post-transcriptional level in the cytoplasm. Recent discoveries of the presence of miRNAs and miRNA function-required argonaute family proteins in the cell nucleus have prompted us to hypothesize that miRNAs may also have regulatory functions in the cell nucleus. In this study, we demonstrate that mouse miR-709 is predominantly located in the nucleus of various cell types and that its nuclear localization pattern rapidly changes upon apoptotic stimuli. In the cell nucleus, miR-709 directly binds to a 19-nt miR-709 recognition element on pri-miR-15a/16-1 and prevents its processing into pre-miR-15a/16-1, leading to a suppression of miR-15a/16-1 maturation. Furthermore, nuclear miR-709 participates in the regulation of cell apoptosis through the miR-15a/16-1 pathway. In summary, the present study provides the first evidence that one miRNA can control the biogenesis of other miRNAs by directly targeting their primary transcripts in the nucleus.

Cell Research (2012) 22:504-515. doi:10.1038/cr.2011.137; published online 23 August 2011

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