Sci-Bytes> Hot Paper in Biology
Week of April 24, 2011
"Most mammalian mRNAs are conserved targets of microRNAs," by Robin C. Friedman, Kyle Kai-how Farh, Christopher B. Burge, and David P. Bartel, Genome Research, 19(1): 92-105, January 2009.
[Authors' affiliations: MIT, Cambridge, MA; Whitehead Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cambridge, MA]
Abstract: "MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small endogenous RNAs that pair to sites in mRNAs to direct post-transcriptional repression. Many sites that match the miRNA seed (nucleotides 2-7), particularly those in 3' untranslated regions (3'UTRs), are preferentially conserved. Here, we overhauled our tool for finding preferential conservation of sequence motifs and applied it to the analysis of human 3'UTRs, increasing by nearly threefold the detected number of preferentially conserved miRNA target sites. The new tool more efficiently incorporates new genomes and more completely controls for background conservation by accounting for mutational biases, dinucleotide conservation rates, and the conservation rates of individual UTRs. The improved background model enabled preferential conservation of a new site type, the "offset 6mer," to be detected. In total, >45,000 miRNA target sites within human 3'UTRs are conserved above background levels, and >60% of human protein-coding genes have been under selective pressure to maintain pairing to miRNAs. Mammalian-specific miRNAs have far fewer conserved targets than do the more broadly conserved miRNAs, even when considering only more recently emerged targets. Although pairing to the 3' end of miRNAs can compensate for seed mismatches, this class of sites constitutes less than 2% of all preferentially conserved sites detected. The new tool enables statistically powerful analysis of individual miRNA target sites, with the probability of preferentially conserved targeting (P-CT) correlating with experimental measurements of repression. Our expanded set of target predictions (including conserved 3'-compensatory sites), are available at the TargetScan website, which displays the P-CT for each site and each predicted target."
This 2009 report from Genome Research was cited 31
times in current journal articles indexed by Clarivate
during November-December 2010. During that two-month period, only one other
biology paper published in the last two years, aside from reviews,
collected a higher number of citations. Prior to the most recent bimonthly
count, citations to the paper have accrued as follows:
September-October 2010: 29 citations
July-August 2010: 37
May-June 2010: 15
March-April 2010: 29
January-February 2010: 21
November-December 2009: 19
September-October 2009: 13
July-August 2009: 6
May-June 2009: 9
March-April 2009: 1
January-February 2009: 1
Total citations to date: 211
SOURCE: Hot Papers Database (Included with a subscription to the print newsletter Science Watch®, available from the Research Services Group of Thomson Reuters. Packaged on a CD that is mailed with each Science Watch issue, the Hot Papers Database contains data on hundreds of highly cited papers published during the last two years. User interface permits searching by author, organization, journal, field, and more. Total citations, as well as citations accrued during successive bimonthly periods, can be assessed and graphed.
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