Characteristics of the Iron-responsive Element (IRE) Stems in the Untranslated Regions of Animal mRNAs

Background: Iron-responsive Elements (IREs) are hairpin structures located in the 5’ or 3’ untranslated region of some animal mRNAs. IREs have a highly conserved terminal loop and UGC/C C bulge five bases upstream loop, which divides stem into an upper lower stem. Objective: The objective this study was to investigate base-pair composition stems determine whether they among mRNAs from different genes. Methods: mRNA sequences six 5’IREs 3’IREs several species were retrieved National Center for Biotechnology Information. folding free energy each IRE sequence predicted using RNAfold WebServer. Results: We found that not There no statistically significant differences energies between mammalian non-mammalian relative either ferritin heavy chain 5’IRE ferroportin 5’IRE. overall UGC/C-containing C-bulge-containing 5’IREs, 3’IREs. Conclusion: Further studies needed variations responsible fine-tuning IRE/Iron-Regulatory Protein interactions maintain balance cellular iron metabolism, identify evolutionary processes drive toward any particular configuration.