Ab initio identification of human microRNAs based on structure motifs.

ABSTRACT:

Background

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, non-coding RNA molecules that are directly involved in post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. The mature miRNA sequence binds to more or less specific target sites on the mRNA. Both their small size and sequence specificity make the detection of completely new miRNAs a challenging task. This cannot be based on sequence information alone, but requires structure information about the miRNA precursor. Unlike comparative genomics approaches, ab initio approaches are able to discover species-specific miRNAs without known sequence homology.

Results

MiRPred is a novel method for ab initio prediction of miRNAs by genome scanning that only relies on (predicted) secondary structure to distinguish miRNA precursors from other similar

SUBMITTER: Brameier M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2238772 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature