Abstract
A total of 68 non-redundant candidate honey bee miRNAs were identified computationally; several of them appear to have previously unrecognized orthologs in the Drosophila genome. Several miRNAs showed caste- or age-related differences in transcript abundance and are likely to be involved in regulating honey bee development.
Highlights
IntroductionNon-coding microRNAs (miRNAs) are key regulators of gene expression in eukaryotes
Non-coding microRNAs are key regulators of gene expression in eukaryotes
Slightly longer bee sequences (75-90 nt) sharing structural features characteristic of miRNAs and aligning well with similar sequences in Drosophila - an approach we call stem-loop scanning (SLS) - identified another set of putative honey bee miRNAs
Summary
Non-coding microRNAs (miRNAs) are key regulators of gene expression in eukaryotes. Insect miRNAs help regulate the levels of proteins involved with development, metabolism, and other life history traits. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play pivotal roles in diverse biological processes through post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. These short (approximately 22 nucleotide (nt)) non-coding RNAs repress protein synthesis by binding to partially complementary sites in the 3' untranslated regions (UTRs) of target genes [1,2,3]. MiRNAs appear to regulate much of the coding transcriptome, influencing the spatial and temporal expression patterns of thousands of genes in plants, nematodes, insects, and vertebrates [7,8]. Either positive selection for, or negative selection against, miRNA target sites can be detected in the 3' UTRs of most genes [9,10]
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