Insights into the role of microRNAs in cardiac diseases: from biological signalling to therapeutic targets.

Autors de IIS La Fe

• 

  Esther Zorio Grima

  Autor

• 

  Pilar Medina Badenes

  Autor

• Joaquín Rueda Soriano

  Autor

• 

  José María Millán Salvador

  Autor

• Miguel Ángel Arnau Vives

  Autor

• Magdalena Beneyto Juan

  Autor

• Francisco Marin Ortuño

  Autor

• José Ricardo Gimeno Costa

  Autor

• Joaquín Osca Asensi

  Autor

• Antonio Salvador Sanz

  Autor

• Francisco España Furio

  Autor

• Amparo Estelles Cortes

  Autor

Grups d'Investigació

• Hemostasia, Trombosis, Arteriosclerosis y Biología vascular

  

  Investigador Principal

  Pilar Medina Badenes

Abstract

microRNAs have recently opened new pathways to explain gene expression and disease biology in many scenarios, including cardiac diseases. microRNAs are endogenous small non-coding RNAs that mediate post-transcriptional repression or messenger RNA degradation. By annealing to inexactly complementary sequences in the 3' untranslated region of the target messenger RNA, protein level is down-regulated. Several microRNAs appear to act cooperatively through multiple target sites in one gene and, conversely, most microRNAs can target several genes. miR-133 and miR-1 are specifically expressed in cardiac and skeletal muscle and control myogenesis, cardiac development, cardiac performance and cardiomyocyte hypertrophy (mainly by tuning transcription factors and other growth-related targets). They also modulate the expression of certain cardiac ion channels and related proteins with proarrhythmic effect. Besides them, other microRNAs have been shown to exert influence on the myocardial growth, the electrical balance and the angiogenesis processes that take place in the heart. Bioinformatics is a useful tool to identify potential targets of a given microRNA, although there is still substantial concern about their reliability. Experimental manipulation of microRNAs has provided a tantalizing basis to speculate that future research on microRNAs may yield important progress in the prevention of sudden cardiac death and in the treatment of cardiac heart failure. However, the final effect of the blockage of microRNAs in vivo remains unclear, since each of them can target hundreds of genes with different intensity. The era of the microRNAs in cardiovascular diseases has just started.