A uniform system for microRNA annotation
- VICTOR AMBROS1,
- BONNIE BARTEL2,
- DAVID P. BARTEL3,
- CHRISTOPHER B. BURGE4,
- JAMES C. CARRINGTON5,
- XUEMEI CHEN6,
- GIDEON DREYFUSS7,
- SEAN R EDDY8,
- SAM GRIFFITHS-JONES9,
- MHAIRI MARSHALL9,
- MARJORI MATZKE10,
- GARY RUVKUN11, and
- THOMAS TUSCHL12,13
- 1Dartmouth Medical School Department of Genetics, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, USA
- 2Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA
- 3Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Biology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
- 4Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Biology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA
- 5Center for Gene Research and Biotechnology, and Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA
- 6Waksman Institute, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA
- 7Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6148, USA
- 8Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Washington University Department of Genetics, Saint Louis, Missouri 63110, USA
- 9The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SA, UK
- 10Institute of Molecular Biology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria
- 11Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, and Department of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA
- 12Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Department of Cellular Biochemistry, Göttingen, Germany
Abstract
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNA gene products about 22 nt long that are processed by Dicer from precursors with a characteristic hairpin secondary structure. Guidelines are presented for the identification and annotation of new miRNAs from diverse organisms, particularly so that miRNAs can be reliably distinguished from other RNAs such as small interfering RNAs. We describe specific criteria for the experimental verification of miRNAs, and conventions for naming miRNAs and miRNA genes. Finally, an online clearinghouse for miRNA gene name assignments is provided by the Rfam database of RNA families.
Keywords
Footnotes
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↵13 [Present address] Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021, USA; fax: (212) 327-7652.
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Article and publication are at http://www.rnajournal.org/cgi/doi/10.1261/rna.2183803.
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- Accepted December 4, 2002.
- Received November 12, 2002.
- Copyright 2003 by RNA Society
