Specificity and Sensitivity of PROMIR, ERPIN and MIR-ABELA in Predicting Pre-MicroRNAs in the Chicken Genome

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Sebastian, Bram | Aggrey, Samuel E.

Affiliations: Poultry Genetics and Biotechnology Laboratory, Department of Poultry Science, Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-2772, USA

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Abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous 21–23 nucleotide molecules that are known to regulate about 30% of protein-coding genes through the RNAi pathway. Low level expression of some miRNA has limited their in-situ discovery. Such limitations could be ameliorated by in-silico methodologies. The efficacies of three major programs (ERPIN, ProMir and miR-abela) in detecting known pre-miRNA were evaluated using chicken pre-miRNA data. The sensitivity of ProMir, miR-abela and ERPIN were 53%, 57% and 93%, respectively. The specificity of the three algorithms using 5,000 random sequences was 98.94%, 99.46%, and 99.10% for ProMir-g, ERPIN and miR-abela, respectively. The sensitivities of the existing programs are low for chicken data and an efficient algorithm may be needed to predict novel chicken pre-miRNAs.

Keywords: MicroRNA, ProMir-g, ERPIN, miR-abela, sensitivity, specificity

Journal: In Silico Biology, vol. 8, no. 5-6, pp. 377-381, 2008