Iron response element

Iron response element
Predicted secondary structure and sequence conservation of IRE
Identifiers
Symbol	IRE
Rfam	RF00037
Other data
RNA type	Cis-reg
Domain(s)	Eukaryota
SO	SO:0000233
PDB structures	PDBe

In molecular biology, the iron response element or iron-responsive element (IRE) is a short conserved stem-loop which is bound by iron response proteins (IRPs, also named IRE-BP or IRBP). The IRE is found in UTRs (untranslated regions) of various mRNAs whose products are involved in iron metabolism. For example, the mRNA of ferritin (an iron storage protein) contains one IRE in its 5' UTR. When iron concentration is low, IRPs bind the IRE in the ferritin mRNA and cause reduced translation rates. In contrast, binding to multiple IREs in the 3' UTR of the transferrin receptor (involved in iron acquisition) leads to increased mRNA stability.