College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China.
FEBS Lett. 2011 Jan 3;585(1):240-8. doi: 10.1016/j.febslet.2010.11.053. Epub 2010 Dec 3.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in post-transcriptional gene expression control. To gain new insight into human miRNAs, we performed comprehensive sequence-based homology search for known human miRNAs to study the evolutionary distribution of human miRNAs. Furthermore, we carried out a series of studies to compare various features for different lineage-specific human miRNAs. Our results showed that major expansions of human miRNA genes coincide with the advent of vertebrates, mammals and primates. Further system-level analysis revealed significant differences in human miRNAs that arose from different evolutionary time points for a number of characteristics, implicating genetic and functional diversification for different human miRNAs during evolution. Our finds provide more useful knowledge for further exploring origins and evolution of human miRNA genes.
微小 RNA（miRNA）在后转录基因表达调控中发挥重要作用。为了深入了解人类 miRNA，我们对已知的人类 miRNA 进行了全面的基于序列的同源性搜索，以研究人类 miRNA 的进化分布。此外，我们还进行了一系列研究，比较了不同谱系特异性人类 miRNA 的各种特征。我们的结果表明，人类 miRNA 基因的主要扩张与脊椎动物、哺乳动物和灵长类动物的出现同时发生。进一步的系统水平分析显示，由于许多特征的进化时间不同，人类 miRNA 之间存在显著差异，这意味着在进化过程中，不同的人类 miRNA 发生了遗传和功能多样化。我们的发现为进一步探索人类 miRNA 基因的起源和进化提供了更多有用的知识。
