Figure 2

Conservation status of avian-specific miRNAs in nine animal species. The orange color indicates miRNA sequence homologs with predicted hairpin-like structures were found in a genome by our analysis. Black dots indicate homolog miRNAs are already recorded in miRBase as known miRNAs. Green color indicates mature miRNA sequences, but not precursor sequences, were found in a genome, and they were not counted as having homologs in other genomes. Blue is the background. Note, sequence homologs for miR-2978, miR-2983, miR-2984, miR-2987, and miR-2956 were found in the chicken genome, but they were not recorded in miRBase, so they didn′t get a black dot. We reported zebra finch specific miRNAs (miR-2955 through miR-2997) previously[32], and they are already in miRBase, so they were not considered to be novel miRNAs.