{"doi":"10.1101/2021.03.22.434418","title":"<i>Drosophila</i> primary microRNA-8 encodes a microRNA encoded peptide acting in parallel of <i>miR-8</i>","abstract":"Summary Background Recent genome-wide studies of many species reveal the existence of a myriad of RNAs differing in size, coding potential and function. Among these are the long non-coding RNAs, some of them producing functional small peptides via the translation of short ORFs. It now appears that any kind of RNA presumably has a potential to encode small peptides. Accordingly, our team recently discovered that plant primary transcripts of microRNAs ( pri-miRNAs ) produce small regulatory peptides (miPEPs) involved in auto-regulatory feedback loops enhancing their cognate microRNA expression which in turn controls plant development. Here we investigate whether this regulatory feedback loop is present in Drosophila melanogaster . Results We perform a survey of ribosome profiling data and reveal that many pri-miRNAs exhibit ribosome translation marks. Focusing on miR-8, we show that pri-miR-8 can produce a miPEP-8. Functional assays performed in Drosophila reveal that miPEP-8 affects development when overexpressed or knocked down. Combining genetic and molecular approaches as well as genome-wide transcriptomic analyses, we show that miR-8 expression is independent of miPEP-8 activity and that miPEP-8 acts in parallel to miR-8 to regulate the expression of hundreds of genes. Conclusion Taken together, these results reveal that several Drosophila pri-miRNAs exhibit translation potential. Contrasting with the mechanism described in plants, these data shed light on the function of yet un-described pri-microRNA encoded peptides in Drosophila and their regulatory potential on genome expression.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":218516,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9533,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":743760,"name":"Patrizia Tavormina","orcid":"0000-0001-8480-3094","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":744347,"name":"Carine Duboé","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":743761,"name":"Hélène San Clemente","orcid":"0000-0002-1864-6577","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":743762,"name":"Marielle Aguilar","orcid":"0009-0002-2334-8889","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":744348,"name":"Philippe Valenti","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":743763,"name":"Dominique Lauressergues","orcid":"0000-0003-0420-2366","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":743764,"name":"Jean‐Philippe Combier","orcid":"0000-0002-4053-4336","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":743765,"name":"Serge Plaza","orcid":"0000-0002-3492-109X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":490770,"name":"Audrey Montigny","orcid":"0000-0001-6935-4972","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":66,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:53:29.626149Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}