Anti-Dicer/DICER1 Antibody Picoband® Fluoro488 Conjugated

Dicer (DICER1), also known as endoribonuclease Dicer or helicase with RNase motif, is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the DICER1 gene. It is mapped to 14q32.13. The DICER1 gene, a member of the ribonuclease III (RNaseIII) family, is involved in the generation of microRNAs (miRNAs), which modulate gene expression at the posttranscriptional level. DICER1 possesses an RNA helicase motif containing a DEXH box in its amino terminus and an RNA motif in the carboxy terminus DICER, also known as helicase-MOI, is required by the RNA interference and small temporal RNA (stRNA) pathways to produce the active small RNA component that represses gene expression. In addition, DICER1 is required for formation of the RNA induced silencing complex (RISC) . It also cleaves double-stranded RNA to produce short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) which target the selective destruction of complementary RNAs.

Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) endoribonuclease playing a central role in short dsRNA-mediated post-transcriptional gene silencing. Cleaves naturally occurring long dsRNAs and short hairpin pre-microRNAs (miRNA) into fragments of twenty-one to twenty-three nucleotides with 3' overhang of two nucleotides, producing respectively short interfering RNAs (siRNA) and mature microRNAs. SiRNAs and miRNAs serve as guide to the RNA- induced silencing complex (RISC) to complementary RNAs to degrade them or prevent their translation. Gene silencing mediated by siRNAs, also called RNA interference, controls the elimination of transcripts from mobile and repetitive DNA elements of the genome but also the degradation of exogenous RNA of viral origin for instance. The miRNA pathway on the other side is a mean to specifically regulate the expression of target genes. .

1. Hutvagner, G., McLachlan, J., Pasquinelli, A. E., Balint, E., Tuschl, T., Zamore, P. D. A cellular function for the RNA-interference enzyme dicer in the maturation of the let-7 small temporal RNA. Science 293: 834-838, 2001. 2. Matsuda, S., Ichigotani, Y., Okuda, T., Irimura, T., Nakatsugawa, S., Hamaguchi, M. Molecular cloning and characterization of a novel human gene (HERNA) which encodes a putative RNA-helicase. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1490: 163-169, 2000.