Roles of micro RNA s in prenatal chondrogenesis, postnatal chondrogenesis and cartilage‐related diseases

Cartilage has limited repair and regeneration capacity, thus damage of cartilage often results in its dysfunction and even chronic diseases like osteoarthritis ( OA ). Chondrogenesis induced by tissue‐engineering methods is essential to treating cartilage‐related diseases. Micro RNA s (mi RNA s) are a class of small non‐coding single‐stranded RNA s which exert their biological effects by binding to the target messenger RNA s (m RNA s), resulting in decay or translation suppression of target m RNA s. There are emerging evidence indicating that mi RNA s may play important roles in regulating both prenatal and postnatal chondrogenesis. During embryonic skeletal development, prenatal chondrogenesis is thought to be a precondition for formation of cartilage in developing limbs. Plenty of studies on different types of stem cells have undoubtedly proven their capacity of differentiating into chondrocytes. Mi RNA s are found to comprehensively modulate these processes by establishing an interaction network with target genes, transcription factors and cytokines et al . In addition, translational application of mi RNA technology has also been explored. In this review, we focus on the up‐dated progress on regulatory mechanisms of mi RNA s in prenatal and postnatal chondrogenesis. In addition, several mi RNA target genes and roles of mi RNA s in cartilage‐related diseases are also discussed. This will contribute to studies of chondrogenesis mechanisms and development of new treating methods.