Computational Identification of Putative miRNAs from Felis Catus

MicroRNAs represent a class of noncoding small RNAs of approx. 20-23 nt length, which are evolutionarily conserved and play a vital role in various biol. processes by either degrading or repressing mRNA translation. The Felis catus (cat) genome sequence has been published, and just revealed the no. of miRNAs in the genome - without mention of any further details on these miRNAs. This paper discusses an in silico comparative approach using all known sequences of vertebrate pre-miRNA as query sequence, and report 405 putative miRNAs from cat genome. We det. the identity values of pre-miRNAs and mature miRNAs besides statistical sequence characteristics. Interestingly, among 405 miRNAs-90, 53 and 50 showed 100% identity to cattle, human and dog, resp. Further, we have validated 6 miRNAs, whose identity are <85% with the query sequence and validated them using MiPred algorithm. We also identify 25 miRNA clusters in cat based on their homologs in other vertebrates. Most importantly, based on identities among pre-miRNA, mature miRNA, miRNA families and clusters, we observe that miRNAs from cat are more identical to cattle, than humans. Our results, therefore may add a new dimension to the studies related to the evolution of cat