EMBL - European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, United Kingdom.
BMC Genomics. 2012 Jun 6;13:218. doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-13-218.
In animals, microRNAs (miRNA) are important genetic regulators. Animal miRNAs appear to have expanded in conjunction with an escalation in complexity during early bilaterian evolution. Their small size and high-degree of similarity makes them challenging for phylogenetic approaches. Furthermore, genomic locations encoding miRNAs are not clearly defined in many species. A number of studies have looked at the evolution of individual miRNA families. However, we currently lack resources for large-scale analysis of miRNA evolution.
We addressed some of these issues in order to analyse the evolution of miRNAs. We perform syntenic and phylogenetic analysis for miRNAs from 80 animal species. We present synteny maps, phylogenies and functional data for miRNAs across these species. These data represent the basis of our analyses and also act as a resource for the community.
We use these data to explore the distribution of miRNAs across phylogenetic space, characterise their birth and death, and examine functional relationships between miRNAs and other genes. These data confirm a number of previously reported findings on a larger scale and also offer novel insights into the evolution of the miRNA repertoire in animals, and it's genomic organization.
在动物中，microRNAs（miRNA）是重要的遗传调控因子。动物 miRNA 似乎随着早期两侧对称动物进化过程中复杂性的提高而扩张。它们的体积小、相似度高，使得系统发育方法具有挑战性。此外，许多物种中 miRNA 编码的基因组位置并不明确。一些研究已经研究了个别 miRNA 家族的进化。然而，我们目前缺乏大规模 miRNA 进化分析的资源。
为了分析 miRNA 的进化，我们解决了其中的一些问题。我们对来自 80 种动物物种的 miRNA 进行了同线性和系统发育分析。我们为这些物种中的 miRNA 提供了同线性图谱、系统发育和功能数据。这些数据代表了我们分析的基础，也是社区的资源。
我们使用这些数据来探索 miRNA 在系统发育空间中的分布，描述它们的诞生和死亡，并研究 miRNA 与其他基因之间的功能关系。这些数据在更大的范围内证实了一些先前报道的发现，并且为动物中 miRNA 库的进化及其基因组组织提供了新的见解。
