Mechanisms of controlling miRNA activity and abundance in mammalian cells

miRNAs are tiny regulatory RNAs that repress gene expression in metazoan animal cells by base pairing to the target mRNAs. miRNA-target messages are repressed translationally and are subsequently getting degraded post repression. Although miRNAs regulate almost half of the protein coding mRNAs in eukaryotes, mechanism of miRNA regulation is largely obscure. We are working on the mechanism of miRNA activity modulation in mammalian immune and cancer cells and in this talk I will discuss some of the recent published and unpublished findings related to intra and intercellular miRNA trafficking and its regulation in mammalian cells.