Figure 1.

Dicer, a cytoplasmic RNaseIII enzyme essential for the formation of microRNAs, is involved in cleaving larger, hairpin‐shaped microRNA precursors into smaller, single‐stranded segments, which are typically 19–25 nucleotides in length. MicroRNAs inhibit translation of mRNA by binding to complementary sequences. It has been shown that the silencing of dicer results in impaired angiogenesis, possibly because of the dysregulation of anti‐angiogenesis genes such as TSP‐1.