Grundhoff Adam
Heinrich-Pette-Institute for Experimental Virology and Immunology, Hamburg, Germany.
Methods Mol Biol. 2011;721:143-52. doi: 10.1007/978-1-61779-037-9_8.
While cloning and/or massive parallel sequencing of small RNAs represent powerful tools for the discovery of novel miRNAs, computational miRNA prediction represents a valuable alternative which can be performed with comparably little technical effort. This is especially true for viruses, as the number of predicted candidates generally remains low and thus within a range that may be readily confirmed by experimental means. Here, we provide a detailed protocol for the prediction of putative miRNA genes using VMir, an ab initio prediction program which we have recently designed specifically to identify pre-miRNAs in viral genomes.
虽然小RNA的克隆和/或大规模平行测序是发现新型miRNA的强大工具，但计算miRNA预测也是一种有价值的替代方法，且所需技术工作量相对较少。对于病毒而言尤其如此，因为预测的候选物数量通常较少，因此在可通过实验手段轻易确认的范围内。在此，我们提供了一份详细的方案，用于使用VMir预测假定的miRNA基因，VMir是我们最近专门设计用于识别病毒基因组中前体miRNA的从头预测程序。
