Abstract
Recent studies have shown that miRNAs can target the promoter and CDS region. Thus, we predicted miRNA target sites in the 5′-UTR, CDS and 3′-UTR of Homo sapiens, Mus musculus and Drosophila melanogaster using miRanda and TargetScan. Target-site densities normalized with the average region length were higher in the 5′-UTR than 3′-UTR in all three organisms but were lower in the negative data set. Interestingly, the putative target sites were more conserved than non-target regions in both the 5′-UTR and 3′-UTR, implying that target sites in the 5′-UTR are subject to high selective pressure and might be functional. In Drosophila, 48 of 78 (61.5%) miRNAs showed high similarities with predicted siRNAs. Based on the results of previous experimental studies and a large-scale statistical analysis, we conclude that miRNA-mediated regulation is not limited to the 3′-UTR. However, the functionality of target sites in the 5′-UTR and CDS requires thorough investigation.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported, in part, by National Basic Research Program of China (2009CB125902), GM special program (2009ZX08001-002B), National Natural Science Foundation of China (30771417, 30871636), and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK2007524).
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Zhou, X., Duan, X., Qian, J. et al. Abundant conserved microRNA target sites in the 5′-untranslated region and coding sequence. Genetica 137, 159–164 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-009-9378-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-009-9378-7