Computational and Experimental Identification of C. elegans microRNAs

Sep. 30, 2003

吳 政 道

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are an abundant class of RNAs that are 21–25 nucleotides (nt) long, and are thought to control gene expression by binding to complementary sites in target mRNAs from protein-coding genes(Brennecke and Cohen, 2003). Recently, based on biochemical approaches, more than 200 miRNAs have been reported by cloning endogenous RNAs(Dostie et al., 2003; Mourelatos et al., 2002). However, these efforts are limited by abundance of transcripts. In this paper, based on genome-wide, sequence-based computational predictions, the authors developed informatic methods to predict miRNAs in the C. elegans genome using sequence conservation and structural similarity to known miRNAs and generated 214 candidates(Grad et al., 2003). They also confirmed the expression of predicted new miRNAs by experimental approaches. In addition, the authors also estimate that the C. elegans genome may encode between 140 and 300 miRNAs and potentially many more by their experimental results and computational methods.

From: Molecular Cell, Vol 11, 1253-1263, May 2003

References

Brennecke,J. and Cohen,S.M. (2003). Towards a complete description of the microRNA complement of animal genomes. Genome Biol. 4, 228.

Dostie,J., Mourelatos,Z., Yang,M., Sharma,A., and Dreyfuss,G. (2003). Numerous microRNPs in neuronal cells containing novel microRNAs. RNA. 9, 180-186.

Grad,Y., Aach,J., Hayes,G.D., Reinhart,B.J., Church,G.M., Ruvkun,G., and Kim,J. (2003). http://arep.med.harvard.edu/miRNA/index.html

Mourelatos,Z., Dostie,J., Paushkin,S., Sharma,A., Charroux,B., Abel,L., Rappsilber,J., Mann,M., and Dreyfuss,G. (2002). miRNPs: a novel class of ribonucleoproteins containing numerous microRNAs. Genes Dev. 16, 720-728.