Figure 1.

Roles of miRNAs in prenatal chondrogenesis, postnatal chondrogenesis and cartilage-related diseases. Expression and function are two major aspects of miRNAs. During embryonic skeletal development, prenatal chondrogenesis is thought to be a precondition for formation of cartilage in developing limbs. Plenty of studies on different types of adult stem cells have undoubtedly proven their capacity of differentiating into chondrocytes. MiRNAs are found to comprehensively modulate these processes by establishing an interaction network with target genes. In terms of translational application, miRNA technology has great potential to be applied to treat cartilage-related diseases, such as osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.