Genome-Wide Identification of Orthologs of miR-1302 Genes in Placental Mammals

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs which regulate gene expression. In this research, we used the Multiz alignments data of 44 Vertebrates to retrieve syntenic homolog sequences. And we identified 37 members of miR-1302 family among 71 potential homolog sequences. Then we analyzed the 37 homologs of hsa-mir-1302s by RepeatMasker and found all of these sequences are derived from MER53 elements. Also we show our method is a good way to acquire the orthologs.