It Doesn't Repeat? Who's Interested?

This report described the uptake of plant-derived microRNAs (miRNA) into the serum, liver and a few other tissues in mice following consumption of rice, as well as apparent gene regulatory activity in the liver. The observation provided a potentially groundbreaking new possibility that RNA-based therapies could be delivered to mammals through oral administration and at the same time opened a discussion on the evolutionary impact of environmental dietary nucleic acid effects across broad phylogenies. A recently reported survey of a large number of animal small RNA datasets from public sources has not revealed evidence for any major plant-derived miRNA accumulation in animal samples. Given the number of questions evoked by these analyses, the limited success with oral RNA delivery for pharmaceutical development, the history of safe consumption for dietary small RNAs and lack of evidence for uptake of plant-derived dietary small RNAs, we felt further evaluation of miRNA uptake and the potential for cross-kingdom gene regulation in animals was warranted to assess the prevalence, impact and robustness of the phenomenon. They believe that the expression changes that the original team noted in their rodents were due to the dietary changes, not to the presence of rice miRNAs, which they say that they cannot detect. Now, at this point, I'm going to exit the particulars of this debate. I can imagine that there will be a lot of hand-waving and finger-pointing, not least because these l...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: The Scientific Literature Source Type: blogs