MicroRNAs and their regulatory effects

MicroRNAs and their regulatory effects
Air date: Wednesday, June 29, 2016, 3:00:00 PM
Category: WALS - Wednesday Afternoon Lectures
Runtime: 01:12:07
Description: NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series
David Bartel is interested in the molecular pathways that regulate eukaryotic gene expression by affecting the stability or translation of messenger RNAs (mRNAs). He studies microRNAs and other small RNAs that specify the destruction and/or translational repression of mRNAs. He also studies mRNAs, with particular interest in their untranslated regions and poly(A) tails, and how these regions recruit and mediate regulatory phenomena.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short RNAs that pair to sites within messenger RNAs (mRNAs) to down-regulate the expression of protein-coding genes. These miRNAs play critical roles in mammalian biology and disease. Indeed, because miRNAs specify the repression of most human genes, it is hard to find a disease, developmental process, or physiological state that is not influenced in some way by miRNAs. For his lecture, Dr. Bartel will present an overview of miRNAs and their regulatory roles. He will then describe the molecular consequences of miRNAs on their mRNA targets and how these consequences change as the relationship between mRNA poly(A)-tail length and translational efficiency shifts during the early embryonic development.
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Author: David Bartel, Ph.D., Professor of Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Member, Whitehead Institute; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
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