Abstract
The discovery of small non-coding RNAs, such as miRNA and piRNA, has dramatically changed our understanding of the role RNA plays in organisms. Recent studies show that a novel small non-coding RNA generated from cleavage of tRNA or pre-tRNA, called tRNA-derived small RNA (tsRNA), serves as a new regulator of gene expression. tsRNA has been determined participate in regulating some specific physiological and pathological processes. Although knowledge regarding the biological roles of miRNA and piRNA is expanding, whether tsRNAs play similar roles remains poorly understood. Here, we review the current knowledge regarding the mechanisms of action and biological functions of tsRNAs in intracellular, extracellular and intergenerational inheritance, and highlight the potential application of tsRNAs in human diseases, and present the current problems and future research directions.
Highlights
Small noncoding regulatory RNAs have emerged as vital players in various biological processes
We summarize the latest views about tRNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNA) functions and discuss the similarity and difference in biological roles and functional mechanism between miRNAs and tsRNAs
Ruggero et al showed that tRNA-Derived fragments (tRF)-3019, processed from tRNA-proline, exhibited perfect sequence complementarity to the binding sites in primers of human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1), priming HTLV-1 reverse transcription [31]
Summary
Small noncoding regulatory RNAs have emerged as vital players in various biological processes. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), which bind their complementary sites in the 3′-untranslated regions (UTRs) of target mRNAs, further inhibiting target gene expression at post-transcriptional level, is the most extensively studied [1, 2]. There are two types of tsRNAs were produced from tRNAs. In the first, the 5′ and 3′ tRNA halves, called tRNA-derived stress-induced RNAs (tiRNAs), are 30–40 nt long.
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