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Updated: Jul 18, 2026

A Reporter Assay to Analyze Intronic microRNA Maturation in Mammalian Cells
Published on: June 16, 2022
Heme is involved in microRNA processing
Michael Faller1, Michio Matsunaga, Sheng Yin
1Department of Biological Chemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
Abstract:
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate the expression of a large number of protein-coding genes. Their primary transcripts (pri-miRNAs) have to undergo multiple processing steps to reach the functional form. Little is known about how the processing of miRNAs is modulated. Here we show that the RNA-binding protein DiGeorge critical region-8 (DGCR8), which is essential for the first processing step, is a heme-binding protein. The association with heme promotes dimerization of DGCR8. The heme-bound DGCR8 dimer seems to trimerize upon binding pri-miRNAs and is active in triggering pri-miRNA cleavage, whereas the heme-free monomer is much less active. A heme-binding region of DGCR8 inhibits the pri-miRNA-processing activity of the monomer. This putative autoinhibition is overcome by heme. Our finding that heme is involved in pri-miRNA processing suggests that the gene-regulation network of miRNAs and signal-transduction pathways involving heme might be connected.
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