Disease Relevance of miR-203

• Elevated expression of miR-203 was observed in psoriatic plaques miR-203 [1].
• Chromosomal deletion or epigenetic silencing of miR-203 correlated with activation of the oncogene ABL1 in leukemia [2].
• Increased expression was detected in early-onset colorectal carcinoma [3]
• miR-203 appears to have a tumour suppressor role in leukemia, mediated by its ability to decrease expression of ABL and BCR-ABL oncogenes [4].

Expression

• miR-203 was highly expressed in skin and in primary keratinocytes [1]. Low level expression was also observed in the esophagus and cervix [1].

High impact information on miR-203

• miR-203 appeared to inhibit the proliferation of epidermal stem cells by suppressing the expression of the transcription factor deltaNp63 [5] [6].

Biological context of miR-203

• Repression of deltaNp63 by miR-203 appearred to occur at the translational level, without mRNA decay [5].
• Although bioinformatic analysis indicated a putative miR-203-binding site was present in suppressor of cytokine signalling-3 (SOCS-3 ) [1], ectopic expression of miR-203 did not lead to repression of SOCS-3 in keratinocytes [6].
• A zinc-finger protein, Zfp281, with four predicted miR-203-binding sites in its 3' UTR may also be regulated by miR-203 [5].
• miR-203 is induced during differentiation of human keratinocytes in response to elevated calcium, vitamin D3 or tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) [7]

References