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HEREDITAS ›› 2010, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (1): 31-40.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1005.2010.00031

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Advances in approaches for the quantitative detection of microRNAs

JING Hua1, SONG Qin-Xin2, ZHOU Guo-Hua1, 3   

  1. 1. School of Life Science and Technology, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China; 2. Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China; 3. Huadong Research Institute for Medicine and Biotechnics, Nanjing 210002, China
  • Received:2009-05-14 Revised:2009-06-28 Online:2010-01-20 Published:2010-01-15
  • Contact: ZHOU Guo-Hua E-mail:ghzhou@public1.ptt.js.cn

Abstract:

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of endogenous non-coding RNAs that play an important role in the control of developmental process of different cells by negative regulation of protein-coding gene expression. Analyzing miRNA expression in tissues or cells can supply valuable information for investigating the biological function of these molecules. Recently, researchers had proposed a number of approaches for analyzing the differences of miRNA expression among dif-ferent physiological or pathological conditions, and found that aberrant expression of miRNA was related to cancers, neu-rological disorders and heart diseases, etc. This review focuses on newly developed strategies for miRNA quantification, and elucidates in detail the probe-hybridization based methods including Northern blotting, microarray, gold nanoparticle labelling, and splinted ligation with radioactive labels. The amplification-based methods including quantitative PCR, rolling cycle amplification, invader assay, and the next generation sequencing methods were also discussed. The advantages and disadvantages of these methods were compared.

Key words: MicroRNA, quantitative detection;research progress