Figure 2

Evaluation of inferring putative miRNAs and sequence comparison among mir-192 orthologs from distinct species. (a) We inferred putative miRNAs from 195 known pre-miRNAs (detected by Srnaloop). We then compared the sequences of the known mature miRNAs with those of the putative miRNAs. The results show that 93.8% of the known miRNAs were almost entirely included in the putative miRNAs inferred from their corresponding precursors. This high level of coverage enabled us to use the putative miRNA sequences for the conservation examination. (b) Mir-192 distributes in human (hsa), mouse (mmu) and rat (rno). Using ClustalW [30], we compared sequences of mir-192 orthologs. The alignment shows that most of the mismatches occur in the terminal loop, the opposite arm and the external portion of the hairpins. Besides the mature functional sequences, the entire pre-miRNA sequences are also highly conserved.