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. 2012 Dec 20;13:714. doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-13-714

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Copyright ©2012 Maxwell et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Metazoan miRNA and siRNA pathways. Representation of standard metazoan models for canonical miRNA biogenesis, mirtron biogenesis, and siRNA processing. The Drosha/Pasha protein complex is specific to canonical miRNA biogenesis and initiates cleavage of the primary miRNA (pri-miRNA) from transcribed mRNAs. Intronic miRNAs (mirtrons) bypass cleavage by Drosha/Pasha, generating precursor miRNAs (pre-miRNAs) via intron splicing of mRNAs. The Dicer and Argonaute proteins are responsible for further processing and transport of miRNAs, in addition to short-interfering RNAs (siRNAs) from exogenous sources, resulting in repression of mRNA targets.