Structural profiles of human miRNA families from pairwise clustering.

Kaczkowski, Bogumił; Torarinsson, Elfar; Reiche, Kristin; Havgaard, Jakob Hull; Stadler, Peter F; Gorodkin, Jan · Bioinformatics · 2009

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a group of small, approximately 21 nt long, riboregulators inhibiting gene expression at a post-transcriptional level. Their most distinctive structural feature is the foldback hairpin of their precursor pre-miRNAs. Even though each pre-miRNA deposited in miRBase has its secondary structure already predicted, little is known about the patterns of structural conservation among pre-miRNAs. We address this issue by clustering the human pre-miRNA sequences based on pairwise, sequence and secondary structure alignment using FOLDALIGN, followed by global multiple alignment of obtained clusters by WAR. As a result, the common secondary structure was successfully determined for four FOLDALIGN clusters: the RF00027 structural family of the Rfam database and three clusters with previously undescribed consensus structures. http://genome.ku.dk/resources/mirclust

Medical subject headings