人组氨酰tRNA来源的小RNA的功能研究

tRNA has been considered as stable and high level expression of RNA, but increasingly evidence showed that the cleavage of tRNA will produce functional short fragments, namely tRNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNAs). Our group found a highly expressed miR-4454 in non-small cell lung cancer cells(NSCLCs) miRNA-chip, consequently proved miR-4454 was not a miRNA but a 16nt-sized histidyl-tRNA cleavage fragment. This histidyl-tsRNA was not detailed researched yet after reported by sequencing. Our data revealed histidyl-tsRNA was produced by Dicer under extreme conditions, and it is possibly performed as miRNAs. Our research intends to use a variety of biochemistry and molecular biology techniques to find out the mechanism of histidyl-tRNA cleavage, study the regulation of histidyl-tsRNA generation and explore the biological function of histidyl-tsRNA. We believe this project will bring new ideas to research on new species and biological function of ncRNA.

tRNA一直被认为是稳定并且高水平表达的RNA，但越来越多证据表明tRNA会裂解产生功能性短片段，即tsRNA。我们课题组在非小细胞肺癌细胞miRNA芯片中发现了高表达的miR-4454，实验发现miR-4454并非miRNA而是16nt大小的组氨酰tRNA裂解片段。组氨酰tsRNA经测序发现后，尚未有详细的研究报道。实验中发现组氨酰tsRNA会在极端条件下由Dicer酶切割产生，并有可能行使类miRNA功能靶向预测靶标。我们的研究目拟将利用多种生物化学与分子生物学技术手段，研究组氨酰tRNA剪切生成组氨酰tsRNA的产生机制及调控机制，探讨组氨酰tsRNA的生物学功能。本项目的开展将会对ncRNA的种类及新生物学功能研究带来新的思路。