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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 May 19.
Published in final edited form as: J Diabetes Clin Res. 2019;1(1):5–23. doi: 10.33696/diabetes.1.003

Figure 1: Biogenesis and function of miRNAs in the regulation of gene expression.

Figure 1:

The pri-miRNAs are transcribed in the nucleus by RNA Pol II (1). Then pre-miRNAs are generated by the Rnase III enzyme Drosha mediated cleavage (2). The pre-miRNAs are transported into the cytoplasm through Exportin (3), cleaved by Dicer to yield double stranded miRNAs (4), and are further processed into single stranded mature miRNAs (5). Mature miRNAs are incorporated into miRISC (6), which is the functional units for targeting mRNAs (7) and reducing gene expression through either mRNA degradation or translational repression (8).