Journal
NATURE STRUCTURAL & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Volume 18, Issue 10, Pages 1153-U89Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.2125
Keywords
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Funding
- Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
- The International Human Frontier Science Program Organization
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [10J06426] Funding Source: KAKEN
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Drosophila melanogaster has two Dicer proteins with specialized functions. Dicer-1 liberates miRNA-miRNA* duplexes from precursor miRNAs (pre-miRNAs), whereas Dicer-2 processes long double-stranded RNAs into small interfering RNA duplexes. It was recently demonstrated that Dicer-2 is rendered highly specific for long double-stranded RNA substrates by inorganic phosphate and a partner protein R2D2. However, it remains unclear how Dicer-1 exclusively recognize pre-miRNAs. Here we show that fly Dicer-1 recognizes the single-stranded terminal loop structure of pre-miRNAs through its N-terminal helicase domain, checks the loop size and measures the distance between the 3' overhang and the terminal loop. This unique mechanism allows fly Dicer-1 to strictly inspect the authenticity of pre-miRNA structures.
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