MicroRNA 3'-compensatory pairing occurs through two binding modes, with affinity shaped by nucleotide identity and position.

ABSTRACT: MicroRNAs (miRNAs), in association with Argonaute (AGO) proteins, direct repression by pairing to sites within mRNAs. Compared to pairing preferences of the miRNA seed region (nucleotides 2-8), preferences of the miRNA 3' region are poorly understood, due to the sparsity of measured affinities for the many pairing possibilities. We used RNA bind-n-seq with purified AGO2-miRNA complexes to measure relative affinities of >1000 3'-pairing architectures for each miRNA. In some cases, optimal 3' pairing increased affinity by >500 fold. Some miRNAs had two high-affinity 3'-pairing modes-one of which included additional nucleotides bridging seed and 3' pairing to enable high-affinity pairing to miRNA nucleotide 11. The affinity of binding and the position of optimal pairing both tracked with the

SUBMITTER: McGeary SE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8940178 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature