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Published August 2008 | public
Journal Article

MicroRNAs: new regulators of immune cell development and function

Abstract

Decades of research went into understanding immune cell development and function without awareness that consideration of a key element, microRNA (miRNA), was lacking. The discovery of miRNAs as regulators of developmental events in model organisms suggested to many investigators that miRNA might be involved in the immune system. In the past few years, widespread examination of this possibility has produced notable results. Results have shown that miRNAs affect mammalian immune cell differentiation, the outcome of immune responses to infection and the development of diseases of immunological origin. Some miRNAs repress expression of target proteins with well established functions in hematopoiesis. Here we bring together much of this work, which has so far only scratched the surface of this very fertile field of investigation, and show how the results illuminate many historic questions about hematopoiesis and immune function.

Additional Information

© 2008 Nature Publishing Group. Published 21 July 2008. Issue Date August 2008. We apologize to those whose work we were unable to cite because of space limitations. We thank C. Koenig for developing the diagram presented in Figure 1. Supported by the US National Institutes of Health (D.B), the Irvington Institute Fellowship Program of the Cancer Research Institute (R.M.O.) and the American Society of Hematology (D.S.R.).

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023