Author(s) :

Arjun Macha.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

Tissue degeneration, especially cardiac tissue degeneration, is increasingly becoming a wider cause of death. The detection of tissue degeneration is often too late, because the difficulty of detection only becomes apparent after large damage occurs. Biomarkers are used to track the progression of diseases. As levels elevate or decrease, they can tell us the constant development of a disease. The problem is that normal biomarkers, such as circulating proteins, are often unusable. They degrade too easily by enzymes, and do not provide any specificity from disease to disease. A better solution to this problem is the use of exosomal miRNA as biomarkers. Exosomal miRNA is not only resistant to degradation by enzymes but is also specific to a certain stressor. This allows us to track the levels of microRNA (miRNA) in body fluids to track the progress of a disease and discerning it from other diseases. To be able to detect changes in levels of miRNA it allows us to recognize if tissue degeneration occurs. Unlike circulating protein biomarkers that are common throughout the body, certain types of miRNAs can be regulated depending on where the degeneration occurs. For certain diseases, stress of cells starts a specific pathway that either increases or decreases the production of a specific miRNA. These pathways are regulated by proteins that bind to miRNA and guide them to secretion.