Identifying microRNAs and Their Editing Sites in .

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that are critical in post-transcriptional regulation. is an important nonhuman primate that is often used in basic and translational researches. However, the annotation of miRNAs in is far from complete, and there are no reports of miRNA editing events in , although editing may affect the biogenesis or functions of the miRNAs. To improve miRNA annotation and to reveal editing events of miRNAs in , we generated 12 small RNA profiles from eight tissues and performed comprehensive analysis of these profiles. We identified 479 conserved pre-miRNAs that have not been reported in and 17 species specific miRNAs. Furthermore, we identified 3386 editing sites with significant editing levels from 471 pre-miRNAs after analyzing the 12 self-generated and 58 additional published sRNA-seq profiles from 17 different types of organs or tissues. In addition to 16 conserved A-to-I editing sites, we identified five conserved C-to-U editing sites in miRNAs of and . We also identified 11 SNPs in the miRNAs of . The analysis of the potential targets of 69 miRNAs with editing or mutation events in their seed regions suggest that these editing or mutation events severely changed their targets and their potential functions. These results significantly increase our understanding of miRNAs and their mutation/editing events in .