Author(s)

Wael Nassar^1,2, Mervat El-Ansary³, Tarek Fayyad⁴, Mostafa Abdel Aziz²

¹Department of Nephrology, Sahel Teaching Hospital, General Organization of Teaching Hospitals and Institutes (GOTHI), Cairo, Egypt.
²Department of Nephrology, Kidney Transplantation Unit, October Six University Hospitals, Cairo, Egypt.
³Department of Clinical Pathology, Stem Cells Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt.
⁴Department of Nephrology, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt.

Small non-protein coding micro-RNAs are regularly exported out of cells, both in health and disease. More than ninety percent of extracellular miRNAs are associated with lower-molecular-mass complexes bound to Argonaute 2 (Ago2), nucleophosmin-1 (NPM1) and high density lipoproteins (HDL), whereas the rest (~10%) are membrane-vesicle-encapsulated within exosomes, shedding microvesicles and apoptotic bodies. Regardless of the debate of the nature of circulating miRNA as byproducts of routine cell activities or mediators of cell-cell communication, proper understanding of the molecular behaviors of miRNA in health and disease, is expected to open a new gate for the discovery of new diagnostic tools and possibly therapeutic implementation in the near future.

Extracellular miRNAs, Extracellular Vesicles (EVs), Exosomes, Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), Microvesicles (MVs)

Nassar, W. , El-Ansary, M. , Fayyad, T. and Aziz, M. (2016) Extracellular Micro-RNAs in Health and Disease: Basic Science, Biogenesis and Release. American Journal of Molecular Biology, 6, 1-11. doi: 10.4236/ajmb.2016.61001.