Identification and characteristics of microRNAs from Bombyx mori.

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules that regulate gene expression by targeting messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and causing mRNA cleavage or translation blockage. Of the 355 Arthropod miRNAs that have been identified, only 21 are B. mori miRNAs that were predicted computationally; of these, only let-7 has been confirmed by Northern blotting.

Analysis of similarity/dissimilarity of DNA sequences based on a class of 2D graphical representation.

On the basis of a class of 2D graphical representations of DNA sequences, sensitivity analysis has been performed, showing the high-capability of the proposed representations to take into account small modifications of the DNA sequences. And sensitivity analysis also indicates that the absolute differences of the leading eigenvalues of the L/L matrices associated with DNA increase with the increase of the number of the base mutations. Besides, we conclude that the similarity analysis method based on the correlation angles can better eliminate the effects of the lengths of DNA sequences if compared with the method using the Euclidean distances.