Detecting MicroRNAs in Plant Genomes with miRkwood.

We present miRkwood, a comprehensive software tool developed to identify microRNAs and their precursor in plant genomes, with or without small-RNA-seq sequencing data. We describe how to install the software, how to set up and run it, and how to explore and analyse the results: genomic annotations, secondary structure of the precursor, alignments, reads distribution.

miRkwood: a tool for the reliable identification of microRNAs in plant genomes.

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play crucial roles in post-transcriptional regulation of eukaryotic gene expression and are involved in many aspects of plant development. Although several prediction tools are available for metazoan genomes, the number of tools dedicated to plants is relatively limited.

Results: Here, we present miRkwood, a user-friendly tool for the identification of miRNAs in plant genomes using small RNA sequencing data.