Mirtrons are a type of

microRNAs MicroRNA (miRNA) are small, single-stranded, non-coding RNA molecules containing 21 to 23 nucleotides. Found in plants, animals and some viruses, miRNAs are involved in RNA silencing and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. miR ...

that are located in the

intron An intron is any nucleotide sequence within a gene that is not expressed or operative in the final RNA product. The word ''intron'' is derived from the term ''intragenic region'', i.e. a region inside a gene."The notion of the cistron .e., gene. ...

s of the

mRNA In molecular biology, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene, and is read by a ribosome in the process of Protein biosynthesis, synthesizing a protein. mRNA is ...

encoding host genes. These short hairpin introns formed via atypical miRNA biogenesis pathways. Mirtrons arise from the spliced-out introns and are known to function in gene expression. Mirtrons were first identified in ''

Drosophila melanogaster ''Drosophila melanogaster'' is a species of fly (the taxonomic order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae. The species is often referred to as the fruit fly or lesser fruit fly, or less commonly the "vinegar fly" or "pomace fly". Starting with Ch ...

'' and ''

Caenorhabditis elegans ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (ro ...

''. The number of mirtrons identified to date are 14, 9, and 19 in ''D. melanogaster, C. elegans'' and

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

s respectively. Mirtrons are alternative precursors for microRNA biogenesis. The short hairpin introns use splicing to bypass DROSHA cleavage, which is otherwise essential for the generation of canonical animal microRNAs. Mirtrons arise from the spliced-out introns and are known to function like classical microRNAs (miRs) and regulate gene expression, by either mRNA destabilisation, inhibition of the

translation Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

or target mRNA cleavage. Now more evidence is emerging that supports the existence of mirtrons in plants. All the miRNAs in plants are derived from the sequential

DCL1 DCL1 (an abbreviation of Dicer-like 1) is a gene in plants that codes for the DCL1 protein, a ribonuclease III enzyme involved in processing double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) and microRNA (miRNA). Although DCL1, also called Endoribonuclease Dicer homolog ...

cleavages from pri-miRNA to give pre-miRNA (or miRNA precursor), but the mirtrons bypass the DCL1 cleavage and enter as pre-miRNA in the miRNA maturation pathway. Mirtrons are distinct from canonical miRNA sequences, and can be distinguished with machine learning methods in data analysis.

References

RNA MicroRNA {{molecular-cell-biology-stub