The miR-132/miR-212 family of miRNAs was first identified in a genome wide search for genes responsive to the transcription factor cAMP response element binding protein (CREB) using an approach termed Serial Analysis of chromatin occupancy (SACO) (Impey et al., 2004). This family of miRNAs is highly conserved in vertebrates, is transcribed as a polycistronic primary transcript, and is highly enriched in the mature neurons of the forebrain (Marson et al., 2008; Hansen et al., 2010). Analysis of the promoter for this miRNA gene cluster reveals the presence of multiple cAMP response element (CRE) sites and experimental evidence verifies that these miRNAs are indeed CREB inducible (Vo et al., 2005); (see Figure 1) Recent studies from Remenyi et al. have shown that this gene cluster in fact produces four mature miRNAs, namely miR-132, miR-132*, miR-212, and miR-212*, where miR-132* and miR-212* are encoded by the same primary transcript, but on the opposite strand, as the miR-132 and miR-212 miRNAs, respectively (Remenyi et al., 2010). Moreover, each of these four miRNAs likely have their own unique set of target mRNA transcripts. Intriguingly,
