The MicroRNAs and Stroke: No Need to be Coded to be Counted

Excerpt

Experimental stroke research conducted in the past three decades can be divided into two major categories. The first is the molecular and cellular studies that evaluated the mechanisms of stroke-induced neuronal death and the second is the development and testing of putative therapeutic compounds to prevent post-stroke brain damage and neurologic dysfunction. Both categories of studies focused on evaluating and/or targeting specific proteins or the genes that encode those proteins. However, protein-coding genes represent <2% of the eukaryotic genome as ∼98% of the transcriptional output is non-coding (nc) RNAs that include microRNA (miRNA), small interfering RNA (siRNA), piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA), long non-coding RNA (LncRNA), small nuclear RNA (snRNA), small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA), antisense RNA (asRNA), and Y-RNA [1]. The ncRNAs are currently considered as the master controllers of the transcription and translation that decides the organ- and cell-specific protein repertoire [2]. Hence, any disruption in the ncRNA function could lead to severe compromises in cellular homeostasis. Despite their abundance and paramount functional importance, very few studies to date evaluated the significance of ncRNAs in acute brain damage. …