It is possible that other miRNAs, including those in the let-7 family, control developmental timing in other tissues during the recovery phase after L1 starvation. Although the complete removal of miRNA functions causes embryonic lethality or infertility in worms, a partial disruption of overall miRNA functions by mutating either ain-1 or ain-2 provides an effective way to investigate miRNA functions (16, 17). However, we found that the reporter transgene with the lin-42 3′UTR was significantly repressed in wild-type worms, but derepressed in the mir-71(lf) worms (Fig. 4 H and I).
