Characterization of Evolutionarily Conserved MicroRNAs in Amphioxus

作     者：Lei Wang Lan Jiang Songnian Hu Yejun Wang 

作者机构：Beijing Institute of Genomics Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100029 China Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049 China Department of Biology the Chinese University of Hong Kong Hongkong China. 

出 版 物：《Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics》 (基因组蛋白质组与生物信息学报（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2010年第8卷第1期

页      面：10-21页

核心收录：

学科分类：0710[理学-生物学] 07[理学] 1001[医学-基础医学(可授医学、理学学位)] 0714[理学-统计学（可授理学、经济学学位）] 0703[理学-化学] 071002[理学-动物学] 0701[理学-数学] 0812[工学-计算机科学与技术（可授工学、理学学位）] 

主　　题：amphioxus microRNA genome evolution 

摘      要：Amphioxus is an extant species closest to the ancestry of vertebrates. Observation of microRNA （miRNA） distribution of amphioxus would lend some hints for evolutionary research of vertebrates. In this study, using the publicly available scaffold data of the Florida amphioxus （Branchiostomafloridae） genome, we screened and characterized homologs of miRNAs that had been identified in other species. In total, 68 pieces of such homologs were obtained and classified into 33 families. Most of these miRNAs were distributed as clusters in genome. Inter-species comparison showed that many miRNAs, which had been thought as vertebrate- or mammal-specific before, were also present in amphioxus, while some miRNAs that had been considered as protostome-specific before also existed in amphioxus. Compared with ciona, amphioxus had an apparent miRNA gene expansion, but phylogenetic analysis showed that the duplicated miRNAs or clusters of amphioxus had a higher homology level than those duplicated ones in vertebrates.