Computational Analysis of Bovine miRNAs across Different Tissues and Species
Date
2012-10-09
Authors
Betrapally, Naga Sridhar
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Abstract
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA molecules of approximately 22 nucleotides in length. They are present as genome-encoded stem-loop precursors that recognize target mRNAs by base pairing, which then regulates their expression. Due to their influence in the expression of hundreds of genes, they play a role in regulation of gene expression for numerous biological processes such as in animal development, apoptosis, fat metabolism and hematopoietic differentiation. Initial studies showed that most miRNAs are conserved among related species. However, recent studies have shown that newly identified miRNAs tend to be species specific. miRNAs are known to have differential expression patterns during development and across tissues but there is not much known about relative abundance and specificity of expression patterns among tissues for most bovine miRNAs. Profiling of bovine miRNAs and evaluation of their expression patterns were carried out in this study for a total of 64 different tissues from bovine Calf and Fetus. The study was carried out to identify tissue specificity and tissue class specificity. Analysis based on this principle revealed tissue specificity for a certain class of miRNAs. Further analysis and deep sequencing of the data shall help us identify the functional role of miRNAs in these tissues.
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Keywords
Micro RNAs, Bovine, Tissue specificity, Clustering analysis, Regulating miRNA