The rapid upregulation of mature miR-9 by alcohol may result from an increase in miR-9 gene expression, via production of new primary miR-9 gene transcript (pri-miR-9) in the nucleus, and/or accelerated conversion of immediate pre-miR-9 precursors (pre-miR-9) into mature miR-9, possibly by increased activity of enzymes such as Dicer (Bernstein et al., 2001) and/or Armitage (Cook et al., 2004;Tomari et al., 2004).
