microRNAs: Fad or future of liver disease

Figure 1 microRNAs involved in hepatic stellate cell transdifferentiation. Functional manipulation studies utilizing mimics and/or antagomirs have demonstrated that the miRs depicted in the above schematic regulate key genes/functions in hepatic stellate cells (HSCs). (Quiescent HSC: yellow circles represent cytoplasmic lipid droplets; activated HSC: purple lines indicate cytoskeletal protein smooth muscle alpha actin; green oval represents Bcl-2; red fibrils represent collagen). Additional profiling studies have shown upregulation of several microRNAs (miRs) in both phenotypes, some of which are already associated with hepatic disease (boxes contain a small fraction of published miRs). References[38-43,47] were used to generate the contents of this figure with design software BioDraw Ultra 12.0.