• DOI:10.1038/35040556
• Corpus ID: 4401732

Conservation of the sequence and temporal expression of let-7 heterochronic regulatory RNA

@article{Pasquinelli2000ConservationOT,
  title={Conservation of the sequence and temporal expression of let-7 heterochronic regulatory RNA},
  author={Amy E Pasquinelli and Brenda J. Reinhart and Frank J. Slack and Mark Q. Martindale and Mitzi I. Kuroda and Betsy Maller and David C. Hayward and Eldon E. Ball and Bernard M. Degnan and Peter M{\"u}ller and J{\"u}rg Spring and Ashok Srinivasan and Mark C. Fishman and John R. Finnerty and Joseph C. Corbo and Michael S. Levine and Patrick S. Leahy and Eric H. Davidson and Gary Ruvkun},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2000},
  volume={408},
  pages={86-89}
}

• A. Pasquinelli, B. Reinhart, +16 authors G. Ruvkun
• Published 2 November 2000
• Biology
• Nature

Two small RNAs regulate the timing of Caenorhabditis elegans development. Transition from the first to the second larval stage fates requires the 22-nucleotide lin-4 RNA, and transition from late larval to adult cell fates requires the 21-nucleotide let-7 RNA. The lin-4 and let-7 RNA genes are not homologous to each other, but are each complementary to sequences in the 3′ untranslated regions of a set of protein-coding target genes that are normally negatively regulated by the RNAs. Here we have detected let-7 RNAs of ∼21 nucleotides in samples from a wide range of animal species, including vertebrate, ascidian, hemichordate, mollusc, annelid and arthropod, but not in RNAs from several cnidarian and poriferan species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Escherichia coli or Arabidopsis. We did not detect lin-4 RNA in these species. We found that let-7 temporal regulation is also conserved: let-7 RNA expression is first detected at late larval stages in C. elegans and Drosophila , at 48 hours after fertilization in zebrafish, and in adult stages of annelids and molluscs. The let-7 regulatory RNA may control late temporal transitions during development across animal phylogeny.