Molecular evolution of microRNA gene families

研究表明，MicroRNA （miRNA）基因家族已经进化到改变其网络结构，从而增加网络冗余，相反，减少其靶基因库。这些发现表明，miRNA基因家族的冗余添加作用在很大程度上归因于避免与已建立的转录因子调控网络冲突的非适应性过程。这进一步表明，miRNA调控网络中的高冗余并不一定是适应性角色（如鲁棒性、故障安全或微调）的标志。

MicroRNA (miRNA) gene families are shown to have evolved to alter their network configurations so that they increase the network redundancy and, in contrast, reduce their target gene repertoire. These findings suggest that a large part of the redundancy-adding role of miRNA gene families is attributable to non-adaptive processes of avoiding conflicts with the established transcription factor regulatory networks. This further indicates that the high redundancy in the miRNA regulatory networks is not necessarily a hallmark of adaptive roles such as robustness, failsafe or fine-tuning.