Mirtrons are a type of microRNAs that are located in the introns of the mRNA encoding host genes.
[1][2] These short hairpin introns formed via atypical miRNA biogenesis pathways.
The short hairpin introns use splicing to bypass DROSHA cleavage, which is otherwise essential for the generation of canonical animal microRNAs.
Mirtrons arise from the spliced-out introns and are known to function like classical microRNAs (miRs) and regulate gene expression, by either mRNA destabilisation, inhibition of the translation or target mRNA cleavage.
[7] Mirtrons are distinct from canonical miRNA sequences, and can be distinguished with machine learning methods in data analysis.