Empirical evidence supporting the competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) hypothesis is accumulating, but studies that model transcriptome-wide binding site abundance suggest that physiological expression changes of most individual transcripts do not compromise microRNA (miRNA) activity. This Review aims to critically evaluate the evidence for and against the ceRNA hypothesis to assess the impact of endogenous miRNA-sponge interactions.
- Daniel W. Thomson
- Marcel E. Dinger