Conserved Secondary Structures in Aspergillus RNA
2008

Conserved RNA Structures in Aspergillus Genomes

Sample size: 6 publication Evidence: moderate

Author Information

Author(s): Abigail Manson McGuire, James E. Galagan

Primary Institution: The Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard

Hypothesis

What are the conserved secondary structures present in the RNA of six Aspergillus genomes?

Conclusion

The study identifies many conserved, high-confidence RNAs of unknown function in Aspergillus genomes and reveals interesting spatial distributions of predicted secondary structures.

Supporting Evidence

  • The study found a total of 7450 predicted secondary structures.
  • Different genomic regions contain different classes of predicted secondary structures.
  • The density of predicted intronic RNAs increases with the length of introns.

Takeaway

Scientists looked at the RNA from six types of fungi and found many important structures that help them work, but we don't know what all of them do yet.

Methodology

The study used RNAz to perform a genome-wide analysis of secondary structures in six Aspergillus genomes and clustered the predicted structures by similarity.

Potential Biases

Potential bias due to high false positive rates in RNA structure predictions.

Limitations

The study's false positive rate for predicted structures is estimated to be high, and it only covers approximately 60% of the A. nidulans genome.

Statistical Information

P-Value

p<1e-7

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1371/journal.pone.0002812

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