Genomic Research to Identify Novel Pathways in the Development of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm

Figure 1

Model of miR-155 binding to the 3′UTR of AGTR1 and association with the 1166A>C polymorphism (rs5186). The hairpin-shaped precursor of miR-155 (pre-miR-155) after being exported in the cytoplasm is assembled into the RNA-induced silencing (RISC) complex (mature miR-155), which transfers it to recognise specific mRNA targets. miR-155 binds with complete sequence complementarity to its target mRNA seed site and induces posttranscriptional gene silencing. In the presence of the −1166 C allele in the 3′UTR of AGTR1, the compensatory base pairing is affected, and miR-155 binding is inhibited leading to increased AGTR1 expression.