ABSTRACT
Plant and animal genomes contain an abundance of small genes that produce RNAs of about 22 nucleotides in length, which was dubbed as microRNAs. These newly found endogenous RNAs may participate in a wide range of genetic regulatory pathways and play an important role in the development. This paper is focused on the finding of the microRNAs, its mechanism and function, as well as the methods of research.
Subject(s)
Caenorhabditis elegans/genetics , Gene Expression Regulation , MicroRNAs/genetics , Animals , Arabidopsis/genetics , Drosophila/genetics , Humans , MicroRNAs/isolation & purification , Tetrahymena/geneticsABSTRACT
Activation tagging is a new method for isolation and functional identification. It can generate dominant gain-of-function mutants by overexpression of a particular endogenous gene. Due to this special characteristics of activation tagging,this method has been a powerful tool for new gene discovery and gene functional analysis. This paper reviewed the principle and study conditions of activation tagging,as well as its use in plant genetic engineering.
