RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 An alternative class of targets for microRNAs containing CG dinucleotide
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 026708
DO 10.1101/026708
A1 Zheng Yan
A1 Bin Zhang
A1 Haiyang Hu
A1 Gangcai Xie
A1 Song Guo
A1 Philipp Khaitovich
A1 Yi-Ping Phoebe Chen
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/02/28/026708.abstract
AB Background MicroRNAs are endogenous ∼23nt RNAs which regulate mRNA targets mainly through perfect pairing with their seed region (positions 2-7). Several instances of bulge UTR sequence can also be recognized by miRNA as their target. But such non-Watson-Crick base pairings are incompletely understood.Results We found a group of miRNAs which had very few conservative targets while potentially having a subclass of bulge message RNA targets. Compared with the canonical target, these bulge targets had a lower negative correlation with the miRNA expression, and either were downregulated in the miRNA overexpression experiment or upregulated in the miRNA knock-down experiment.Conclusions We proved that the bulge target exists widely in certain groups of miRNAs and such non-canonical targets can be recoginized by miRNA. Incorporating these bulge targets, combined with evolutionary conservation, will reduce the false-positive rate of microRNA computational target prediction.