MicroRNAs - powerful repression comes from small RNAs.

microRNAs (miRNAs) encode a novel class of small, non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression post-trancriptionally. miRNAs comprise one of the major non-coding RNA families, whose diverse biological functions and unusual capacity for gene regulation have attracted enormous interests in the RNA world. Over the past 16 years, genetic, biochemical and computational approaches have greatly shaped the growth of the field, leading to the identification of thousands of miRNA genes in nearly all metazoans. The key molecular machinery for miRNA biogenesis and silencing has been identified, yet the precise biochemical and regulatory mechanisms still remain elusive. However, recent findings have shed new light on how miRNAs are generated and how they function to repress gene expression. miRNAs provide a paradigm for endogenous small RNAs that mediate gene silencing at a genome-wide level. The gene silencing mediated by these small RNAs constitutes a major component of gene regulation during various developmental and physiological processes. The accumulating knowledge about their biogenesis and gene silencing mechanism will add a new dimension to our understanding about the complex gene regulatory networks.