Researchers develop tool to determine function of MicroRNAs
Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - 14:08
in Biology & Nature
As microRNA biology has been implicated in everything from the development of cancer to virus infections, a new tool developed by scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai holds tremendous potential to develop new therapies that involve these small regulatory fragments of RNA. The scientists' findings are detailed in a study, titled "MicroRNA Function is Limited to Cytokine Control in the Acute Response to Virus Infection," published in the December issue of Cell Host & Microbe. While the article focuses on microRNA function as it pertains to virus infection, the development and characterization of this new tool has implications that far exceed the field of microbiology.