In the last decade, studies have indicated that small RNA molecules produced from non-coding gene transcripts, plays an important role in regulation of gene expression. Not all genes of an organism in a cell are uni-vocally expressed. The activation and suppression depends on the need of the cell and is subjected to various regulatory mechanisms. Transcriptional regulation is a key mechanism in determining the expression of a cell. The regulatory regions of a gene containing short sequences of nucleotides is recognized by proteins associated with transcription. The most common of these regions lies upstream of the transcription start point and are referred to as promoters or cis-regulatory regions. These sequence motifs are critical for the efficient binding of the transcription machinery and can activate or repress gene expression depending on their nature.
The small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) play a crucial role in RNA interference. This suggest that the tiny RNAs have major regulatory roles in cells and that may share their regulatory mechanism. miRNA on the other hand regulates by post-transcriptional silencing process.
Specifically, miRNAs typically inhibit or reduce translation of gene transcripts into proteins. As such, understanding the role of miRNAs is key to unraveling biological processes.
Exploring the intricate functional biological systems requires modeling regulatory mechanisms that control the timing and spatial organization of gene expression.