Figure 1

Sequence characteristics of the sequestered microRNAs in Arabidopsis and rice. (A) Statistical results of the distribution of the predicted target mimic sites along the transcripts. Each percentage was calculated by dividing the number of the target mimic sites located within a specific region by the total number of the mimic sites in the plant. Five regions on the target mimic transcripts were defined according to the sequence information provided by TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource, release 10) [11] and TIGR rice (The Institute for Genome Research, release 6.1; currently named the J. Craig Venter institute) [12]: 5’ UTR (untranslated region), 3’ UTR, CDS (coding sequence), the boundary between 5’ UTR and the 5’ end of the CDS (5’ UTR—CDS), and the boundary between 3’ UTR and the 3’ end of the CDS (CDS—3’ UTR). (B) Distribution densities of the predicted target mimic sites. Each normalized density (number of mimic sites/1000 nt) was calculated by dividing the total number of the mimic sites within each region by the summed length of the corresponding region sequences. Three regions on the target mimic transcripts, i.e. 5’ UTR, 3’ UTR and CDS, were defined as described in (A). (C) Length distribution of the sequestered microRNAs. (D) 5’ terminal compositions of the sequestered microRNAs. For (C) and (D), all the microRNAs registered in the miRBase (release 17) were included as controls (see “Arabidopsis Total” and “Rice Total”).