Ingredients for in silico miRNA identification and annotation

Christine Gaspin (1, 2) , Olivier Rué (3) , Matthias Zytnicki (1)

1 MIAT INRA - Unité de Mathématiques et Informatique Appliquées de Toulouse
2 Plateforme Bio-Informatique - Génotoul
3 MaIAGE - Mathématiques et Informatique Appliquées du Génome à l'Environnement [Jouy-En-Josas]

Annotation of microRNAs (miRNAs) is a prerequisite to the study of their functional analysis at the genome scale. The first list of criteria published for miRNA annotation was established in 2003 by the group of Thomas Tuschl and since then, a large number of bioinformatics resources relying on these criteria have been produced. Recently, the criteria and nomenclature considered for miRNA annotation were questioned by several groups with regard to available resources (databases, miRNA prediction software) but also considering all accumulated knowledge during the ten past years. In this paper, we revisit criteria for miRNA annotation and their importance to design relevant bioinformatics resources able to identify accurately members of known miRNA families as well as members of putative new families.

Mots clés: miRNA; nomenclature; Isoform; Identification; Alignment

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Christine Gaspin, Olivier Rué, Matthias Zytnicki. Ingredients for in silico miRNA identification and annotation. JSM Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering, 2016, 3 (5), pp.1-5. ⟨hal-01607400⟩