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. 2008 May 21:9:236.
doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-9-236.

MicroRNA-encoding long non-coding RNAs

Affiliations

MicroRNA-encoding long non-coding RNAs

Shunmin He et al. BMC Genomics. .

Abstract

Background: Recent analysis of the mouse transcriptional data has revealed the existence of approximately 34,000 messenger-like non-coding RNAs (ml-ncRNAs). Whereas the functional properties of these ml-ncRNAs are beginning to be unravelled, no functional information is available for the large majority of these transcripts.

Results: A few ml-ncRNA have been shown to have genomic loci that overlap with microRNA loci, leading us to suspect that a fraction of ml-ncRNA may encode microRNAs. We therefore developed an algorithm (PriMir) for specifically detecting potential microRNA-encoding transcripts in the entire set of 34,030 mouse full-length ml-ncRNAs. In combination with mouse-rat sequence conservation, this algorithm detected 97 (80 of them were novel) strong miRNA-encoding candidates, and for 52 of these we obtained experimental evidence for the existence of their corresponding mature microRNA by microarray and stem-loop RT-PCR. Sequence analysis of the microRNA-encoding RNAs revealed an internal motif, whose presence correlates strongly (R2 = 0.9, P-value = 2.2 x 10(-16)) with the occurrence of stem-loops with characteristics of known pre-miRNAs, indicating the presence of a larger number microRNA-encoding RNAs (from 300 up to 800) in the ml-ncRNAs population.

Conclusion: Our work highlights a unique group of ml-ncRNAs and offers clues to their functions.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The PriMir pipeline. Prediction and verification of Nmir_018. A. The secondary structure of ml-ncRNA A530020N14 as predicted by RNAfold [44, 45]. B. Among the six hairpins extracted from the ml-ncRNA, four are conserved between mouse and rat (blue frame). The green dashed line indicates the pre-miRNA 5' and 3' end positions predicted by PriMir. Of the four conserved hairpins, one had a PriMir score above 7, and was regarded as a pre-miRNA candidate (pre-Nmir_018; red frame). C. The upper part of the panel shows the predicted pre-Nmir_018, red color letters indicating the position of the mature miRNA Nmir_018. The lower part shows the microarray slide (left) with a positive signal for Nmir_018 (white frame), and an agarose gel electrophoresis (right) of the loop-stem RT-PCR fragment for Nmir_018 (white frame).
Figure 2
Figure 2
The internal motif (IM) of the me-ncRNAs. A: Logo of the IM (WebLogo [52]). B: The relationship between IM frequency and PriMir Score. The ml-ncRNAs were binned according to their PriMir score, and the fraction of transcripts with the IM were plotted. Blue circles: All ml-ncRNAs. Red triangles: ml-ncRNAs with conserved stem-loops. C: Frequency of IM in experimentally supported me-ncRNAs, unsupported ME-ncRNA candidates, other ml-ncRNAs, and in flanking sequence of intronic miRNAs.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The distribution of PriMir scores of the training set and the potential pre-miRNA candidates. Red columns: the 220 known pre-miRNAs in the training set; blue columns: the 23 known pre-miRNAs in ml-ncRNAs; green columns: the predicted 4463 conserved hairpins. The red arrow indicates the cutoff value "7" PirMir used to predict candidate pre-miRNAs. Hundred and sixty-one (73%) of the 220 known pre-miRNAs fall above this cutoff. Of the 23 known pre-miRNAs located in ml-ncRNAs, 18 (78%) have scores higher than 7.

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