ncRNA-Mediated Regulatory Networks and Their Role in the Epigenetic Landscape of Development and Disease
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Biophysics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 4815
Special Issue Editors
Interests: microRNAs; ncRNAs; lncRNAs; transcription factors; gene regulatory networks; bistability and oscillatory gene expression; feedback and feed-forward loops; complex inherited neuroendocrine tumors; stem-cell differentiation; epigenetic modulation of phenotypic plasticity; ribozymes; RNA nanoparticles; RNA therapeutics
2. IIGM—Italian Institute for Genomic Medicine, c/o IRCCS Candiolo, Torino, Italy
Interests: microRNAs; ncRNAs; post-transcriptional regulation; gene regulatory networks; epigenetic modulation of phenotypic plasticity; mathematical modelling; stochastic gene expression
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Gene regulation is a complex biological process involving various regulators across multiple levels. Because it controls organism development and cell homeostasis, its dysregulation is closely associated with disease and differentiation processes. In gene regulation, transcription factors (TFs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) have been recognized to play important roles at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, respectively.
We now have evidence that the interplay amongst microRNAs and, more generally, ncRNAs and TFs may create network motifs—i.e., recurrent gene regulatory patterns—that finetune gene regulation in mammals by controlling the impact of noise on gene expression.
Cellular phenotypes are characterized by stable gene-expression states determined by the underlying gene-regulatory networks together with their functionally relevant motifs. As an example, a classical motif is a toggle switch whose components are a miRNA and a TF that repress each other’s expression. In such a circuit, the overexpression of either the TF or the miRNA corresponds to one of two mutually exclusive cell fates, such as stem vs. progenitor or physiological vs. neoplastic states.
Investigating the interplay between TFs and miRNAs/ncRNAs in regulatory circuits and the ways in which they reduce or amplify noise to produce specific cell states are of interest.
For this Special Issue, we welcome the submission of reviews and original research articles regarding the role of gene regulatory circuits mediated by miRNAs/ncRNAs and TFs in development and disease, with the aim of producing a dedicated article collection focusing on their action and dysregulation in physiological and pathological processes.
Dr. Ettore Luzi
Dr. Carla Bosia
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- microRNAs
- transcription factors
- gene regulatory network
- ncRNAs
- phenotypic robustness
- network perturbation
- extrinsic noise
- gene expression fluctuations
- Waddington epigenetic landscapes
- embryonic-stem cells
- cancer
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