miRNAs are small (21–26 nt), endogenous, single-stranded RNA molecules that act mainly as post-transcriptional repressors of gene expression (He and Hannon, 2004) in many tissues, including CNS (Kosik, 2006). In addition, miRNAs can downregulate their mRNA targets in mammals (Farh et al., 2005;Lewis et al., 2005;Yekta et al., 2004) by binding to target mRNA resulting in rapid mRNA cleavage (Hutvagner and Zamore, 2002;Valencia-Sanchez et al., 2006;Yekta et al., 2004). These features make them ideal candidates for mediators of the observed alcohol regulation of BK transcripts.
