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closeIs it physiologically relevant?
Posted by tsoimp on 01 Feb 2010 at 22:39 GMT
The title is very eyes-catching but the link between miR-30 and Drp1 is not direct or insignificant.
As we all know that mitochondria fragments during apoptosis, therefore, anything that blocks or promotes apoptosis will affect mitochondria fission indirectly. Although mitochondria fission and apoptosis could be uncoupled, there is no data indicating that p53 regulates these two processes separately.
It's novel that Drp1 is a new trasncriptional target of p53. However, it is not shown whether this elevated Drp1 level by p53 during apoptosis is required for mitochondrial fission. The best experiment will be to test whether pDrp1-BS2-Drp1 (endogenous Drp1 promoter with p53 binding site mutated drives Drp1 expression) can rescue Drp1 RNAi phenotype. If elevated Drp1 level is essential for mitochondrial fission during apoptosis, this construct should not rescue the phenotype.
Therefore, if miR-30 regulates mitochondrial fission simply through regulating apoptosis by targeting p53, I don't think it provides significant advancement of our understanding on how apoptosis triggers mitochondria fission.