Review: Non-canonical role of Drosha ribonuclease III

The typical function of Drosha is participating in cleaving pri-miRNA, the initial step of miRNA biogenesis, in the nucleus. Since Drosha has a double-stranded RNA-binding domain and two RNase III domains, when it binds and/or cleaves other RNA species other than pri-miRNA, Drosha is able to induce a variety of novel biological effects. Moreover, by interacting with other protein, Drosha is able to modify the function of other protein complexes. Recently, diverse non-classical functions of Drosha have been demonstrated, such as promoting DNA damage repair, transcriptional activation and inhibition, pre-mRNA splicing regulation, mRNA destabilization, and virus-host interaction. In this review, we describe these newly discovered functions of Drosha in order to present a panoramic picture of the novel biological processes that Drosha is involved in.