Genome-wide analysis of clustering patterns and flanking characteristics for plant microRNA genes

摘要: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been proven to play important roles at the post-transcriptional level in animals and plants. To investigate clustering patterns specific sequence characteristics flanking regions of plant miRNA genes, we performed genome-wide analyses Arabidopsis thaliana, Populus trichocarpa, Oryza sativa Sorghum bicolor. Our results showed that pair distances were significantly higher than would expected occur random number gene pairs separated by very short < 1 kb was protein-coding pairs. Analysis promoter architecture different genes plants revealed significant differences distribution core promoters between intergenic miRNAs intragenic miRNAs, highly conserved low or nonconserved miRNAs. We applied two motif-finding algorithms search for over-represented, statistically motifs, discovered six species-specific motifs across four species studied. Moreover, also identified, first time, several over-represented associated with these may be useful understanding mechanism origin new The presented provide a insight into transcriptional regulation processing