Mir-9/mir-79 microRNA precursor family

The miR-9 microRNA, is a short non-coding RNA gene involved in gene regulation. The mature ~21nt miRNAs are processed from hairpin precursor sequences by the Dicer enzyme. The dominant mature miRNA sequence is processed from the 5' arm of the mir-9 precursor, and from the 3' arm of the mir-79 precursor. The mature products are thought to have regulatory roles through complementarity to mRNA. In vertebrates, miR-9 is highly expressed in the brain, and is suggested to regulate neuronal differentiation. A number of specific targets of miR-9 have been proposed, including the transcription factor REST and its partner CoREST.

Species distribution

miR-9 has been identified in Drosophila, mouse and human, and the related miR-79 in C. elegans and Drosophila melanogaster.

Role in disease

microRNAs have been implicated in human cancer in a number of studies. It has been shown that human miR-9 expression levels are reduced in many breast cancer samples due to hypermethylation an epigenetic modification. Hildebrandt et al. show that two genes encoding for has-miR-9 are significantly hypermethylated in clear cell renal carcinoma tumours.