Singh Jyoti, Ambi Uddhav B
Lab-1 (New Building), National Centre for Cell Science, University of Pune Campus, Ganeshkhind, Pune, Maharashtra, India.
J Insect Sci. 2019 May 1;19(3). doi: 10.1093/jisesa/iez049.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are evolutionarily conserved small noncoding RNAs, which play important regulatory roles in various biological processes. In this study, we have developed a computational approach for detecting conserved miRNAs based on comparison of whole genome sequences of closely related species by considering various key features of experimentally validated miRNAs. By applying this approach, we have identified 34 new miRNAs from Bombyx mori (L.), which are also conserved in Drosophila melanogaster (Diptera: Drosophilidae) and Anopheles gambiae (Diptera: Culicidae). Most of these miRNAs were associated with repeat region of the genome. We did an expression analysis of the 34 newly predicted miRNAs and found that 30 of these miRNAs are expressing in different tissues of B. mori. Besides, we have also predicted the putative targets of these miRNAs in B. mori based on several known characteristic features of miRNA::mRNA duplexes and found that these targets include diverse range of functions, suggesting multiple layers of gene regulation of various important biological processes.
微小RNA（miRNA）是进化上保守的小非编码RNA，在各种生物学过程中发挥重要的调控作用。在本研究中，我们通过考虑实验验证的miRNA的各种关键特征，开发了一种基于密切相关物种全基因组序列比较来检测保守miRNA的计算方法。通过应用这种方法，我们从家蚕中鉴定出34个新的miRNA，它们在黑腹果蝇（双翅目：果蝇科）和冈比亚按蚊（双翅目：蚊科）中也保守。这些miRNA中的大多数与基因组的重复区域相关。我们对34个新预测的miRNA进行了表达分析，发现其中30个在家蚕的不同组织中表达。此外，我们还基于miRNA::mRNA双链体的几个已知特征预测了这些miRNA在家蚕中的假定靶标，发现这些靶标具有多种功能，表明各种重要生物学过程存在多层基因调控。
