Published online 30 July 2008 | Nature 454, 562 (2008) | doi:10.1038/454562b

Thousands of proteins affected by miRNAs
Far from being junk, these snippets of the genome exert wide-ranging
influence.

Erika Check Hayden

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) subtly influence a vast number of proteins involved in
most key biological processes, according to the first large-scale analyses
of how these small pieces of noncoding RNA affect proteins (M. Selbach et
al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature07228; 2008; D. Baek et al. Nature
doi:10.1038/nature07242; 2008).

"These papers represent a tour de force in miRNA research, utilizing
state-of-the-art technology to tackle a very vexing problem in biology,
namely the identification of miRNA target genes," says Frank Slack, a
molecular biologist and miRNA researcher at Yale University.