Recent research from the Cifuentes laboratory that describes the functional role of a non-canonical microRNA-processing pathway has been published in Molecular Cell: Ago2-Dependent Processing Allows miR-451 to Evade the Global MicroRNA Turnover Elicited during Erythropoiesis
The work spearheaded by the Cifuentes’ laboratory postdoc Dmitry Kretov addresses a long-standing question that has puzzled developmental biologists beyond microRNA aficionados: Why miR-451, a vertebrate-specific microRNA expressed in red blood cells, uses an alternative processing pathway that bypasses Dicer but instead relies on the slicer activity of Ago2?
Kretov et al., report that miR-451 uses this non-canonical processing pathway to escape the global downregulation of microRNAs and Dicer that occurs during erythropoiesis, triggered in part by a negative-feedback loop between miR-144 and Dicer.
Overall, this study uncovers the evolutionary relevance of the non-canonical processing of miR-451 and it highlights a novel physiological role of miR-144, with important clinical implications for the study of anemia and the differentiation of red blood cells.