RNA viruses can hijack vertebrate microRNAs to suppress innate immunity

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Reference Sequence (RefSeq) database is a collection of genomic, transcript and protein sequence records. These records are selected and curated from public sequence archives and represent a significant reduction in redundancy compared to the volume of data archived by the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration. The database includes over 16 000 organisms, 2.4 × 106 genomic records, 13 × 106 proteins and 2 × 106 RNA records spanning prokaryotes, eukaryotes and viruses (RefSeq release 49, September 2011). The RefSeq database is maintained by a combined approach of automated analyses, collaboration and manual curation to generate an up-to-date representation of the sequence, its features, names and cross-links to related sources of information. We report here on recent growth, the status of curating the human RefSeq data set, more extensive feature annotation and current policy for eukaryotic genome annotation via the NCBI annotation pipeline. More information about the resource is available online (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/RefSeq/).

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of noncoding RNAs found in organisms as evolutionarily distant as plants and mammals, yet most of the mRNAs they regulate are unknown. Here we show that the ability of an miRNA to translationally repress a target mRNA is largely dictated by the free energy of binding of the first eight nucleotides in the 5' region of the miRNA. However, G:U wobble base-pairing in this region interferes with activity beyond that predicted on the basis of thermodynamic stability. Furthermore, an mRNA can be simultaneously repressed by more than one miRNA species. The level of repression achieved is dependent on both the amount of mRNA and the amount of available miRNA complexes. Thus, predicted miRNA:mRNA interactions must be viewed in the context of other potential interactions and cellular conditions.

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