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. 2012 Apr 9;6:48. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2012.00048

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Copyright © 2012 Gascon and Gao.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited.

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The canonical miRNA biogenesis pathway. miRNAs are produced from long Pol II transcripts (pri-miRNA). A nuclear complex containing Drosha (purple oval) and DGCR8 (pink oval) cleaves the primary transcript and generates a precursor miRNA (pre-miRNA). After nuclear export, pre-miRNA is further processed by Dicer (blue croissant). Then, Ago2 (yellow oval) binds to the complex formed by miRNA duplex and Dicer. Ago2 induces Dicer dissociation and the release of the passenger strand from the complex. Finally, other proteins, such as GW182 (dark blue), associate with Ago2 and form a RISC complex that recognizes and then silences (by mRNA degradation and/or translation inhibition) a target mRNA.