The Impact of Dietary Compounds in Functional Foods on MicroRNAs Expression

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of non-coding endogenous RNA molecules that are involved in post-transcriptional gene silencing via binding to their target messenger RNA, leading to mRNA degradation or translational repression. MicroRNAs can be modulated by several factors including hormones, transcription factors, and dietary compounds. These biologically active compounds have positive impact on the progression of human pathology including non-communicable diseases, which indicating that administration of diet may have potential as therapeutic agents in modulating the risk of chronic diseases. Interestingly, evidence emerging in recent years suggests that dietary miRNAs can be absorbed in human circulation, modulated human gene expression and biological functions. The exploitation of the miRNA functioning within different origins, cellular miRNAs and dietary miRNAs will help us to understand the molecular machinery as well as the regulatory mechanisms involved in fundamentally important biological processes. Therefore, this knowledge may be applied of natural bioactive compounds in preventive or therapeutic approaches.

Dietary microRNAs (miRNAs) and Their Cutting-Edge Use in Food Science

“…Interestingly, these dietary miRNAs have developed into prognostic biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of diseases like cancer, epilepsy, viral infections, neurological illness, cardiovascular disorders, sepsis, diabetes, and muscular disorders [65][66][67][68]. Numerous studies have been reported to determine how dietary miRNAs contribute to the treatment of various human/animal diseases [7,33,47,[65][66][69][70][71][72][73]. Recently dietary miRNAs have been implicated in the treatment of various genetic and non-genetic diseases/ disorders in humans (Figure 3, Table 1).…”