MicroRNA Profiling in Skin Care: What Have We Learned?

Abstract

For a number of years, profiling of the up and down-regulation of specific micro RNAs in response to various skin afflictions has been conducted to expand our understanding of these conditions as well as to find new therapeutic solutions. MicroRNAs represent one of the short non-coding RNA effectors of the RNA interference pathway for post-transcriptional gene silencing. Due to their flexible sequence complementarity requirements for targeting specific messenger RNAs, micro RNAs have the capacity to modulate gene expression of multiple proteins in a cell, thus potentially impacting several signaling pathways. Multiple technologies have been developed to make the study of micro RNA modulation more prolific and mainstream. With the wealth of data that has been accumulated as a result of these expanded analyses, it is worthwhile to inquire about what has been learned and how treatments for skin diseases and disorders have been expanded and improved due to micro RNA profiling.