From the latest issue of Science:
We demonstrated that despite their small size, specific miRNAs contain additional sequence elements that control their posttranscriptional behavior, including their subcellular localization. We showed that human miR-29b, in contrast to other studied animal miRNAs, is predominantly localized to the nucleus. The distinctive hexanucleotide terminal motif of miR-29b acts as a transferable nuclear localization element that directs nuclear enrichment of miRNAs or small interfering RNAs to which it is attached.
Cool.
More like this
Last past week was incredible. A slew of very important papers stemming from basic science and having deep impacts on cancer and stem cells came out in Nature and Science.
After the last miRNA post, I was alerted to this paper that appeared in the June 15th edition of Nature:
Cool, this adds nicely to proteinous NLSs and DNA nuclear targeting sequences (DTSs).