[annotation] GO Help query on microRNAs

[Ceri Van Slyke]

Hi,
I have done most of the curation for zebrafish microRNA genes (mirn) 
at ZFIN.   We endeavor to capture GO from the literature for all 
genes including the microRNA genes.

There are 4 GO terms that can be specifically associated with the 
mirn genes themselves, miRNA-mediated gene silencing (GO:0035195) and 
micro-ribonucleoprotein complex (GO:0035068), miRNA-mediated gene 
silencing, negative regulation of translation (GO:0035278) and 
miRNA-mediated gene silencing, mRNA cleavage (GO:0035279).    There 
are other functions that can be curated but they are not exclusively 
microRNA  functions and tend to be biological processes.
We have 68 microRNA genes annotated with miRNA-mediated gene 
silencing (GO:0035195).

Most authors working with zebrafish seem only to state that a 
particular sequence is a microRNA and so it must be involved in 
miRNA-mediated gene silencing (GO:0035195).  This means most of our 
annotations have the evidence code NAS.  There are a few instances of 
authors saying this zebrafish microRNA is like that mouse microRNA 
but the mouse microRNA does not have any GO so we can't really use 
the ISS evidence code and comply with the reference genome guidelines.

Hope this helps,
Ceri


At 12:39 PM 10/8/2007, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Would someone be able to answer this query about microRNAs, please?
>
>Thanks,
>Amelia.
>
> >contactName: Martha Bulyk
> >contactEmail: mlbulyk at receptor.med.harvard.edu
> >contactText: How many mammalian microRNAs are in Gene Ontology, and
> >how many have annotation terms assigned to them?  Is there an ongoing
> >effort to capture microRNA functions as part of GO?
> >
> >Thank you,
> >Martha
> >
>
>--
>Amelia Ireland
>GO Editorial Office,
>European Bioinformatics Institute, UK.
>Carbon neutral driving: http://www.targetneutral.com/TONIC/index.jsp