MicroRNA dynamics during retinal development

The mature mammalian retina results from a complex series of developmental events. A lot of work now exists on the organization, function, and development of mouse retina, and the high-throughput technologies for gene expression analyses have helped us to obtain deep insight into the mechanism about the genes that control the retinal neurogenesis and vasculogenesis. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of endogenous non-coding RNAs that inhibit protein translation through binding to target mRNAs. miRNAs have been reported to be involved in regulating multiple physiological and pathological activities, such as ontogenesis, organogenesis, immunoprotection, and tumorigenesis. To identify miRNAs that are specifically regulated in retinal development, total RNAs isolated from retinas isolated from mice in different developmental periods were used for high-throughput sequencing. The data presented here reveals the spatiotemporal miRNA expression patterns which occur during mice retina development and provides a foundation to further investigate how miRNAs contribute to retinal neurogenesis and vasculogenesis. Overall design: miRNA profiles of retinas from mice at postnatal day 1 (P1), P7, and P17 were generated by deep sequencing.