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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 May 1.
Published in final edited form as: Trends Mol Med. 2011 Feb 25;17(5):235–243. doi: 10.1016/j.molmed.2011.01.008

Figure 4. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within microRNA binding sites can lead to inefficient gene silencing.

Figure 4

MicroRNAs regulate gene expression by binding to regions containing sufficient sequence complementary in their target mRNAs, often with internal loops (not depicted). A single mismatch in base-pairing, particularly at the 5’ seed region of the miRNA, can be sufficient to reduce the binding affinity between miRNA and its target mRNA and can lead to inefficient downregulation, and subsequently, an increase in protein expression.