The landscape of miRNA editing in animals and its impact on miRNA biogenesis and targeting

  1. Rui Zhang1
  1. 1Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China
  1. 2 Co-first authors, listed alphabetically

  • Corresponding authors: zhangrui3{at}mail.sysu.edu.cn, gnannan3{at}mail.sysu.edu.cn
  • Abstract

    Adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) RNA editing regulates miRNA biogenesis and function. To date, fewer than 160 miRNA editing sites have been identified. Here, we present a quantitative atlas of miRNA A-to-I editing through the profiling of 201 pri-miRNA samples and 4694 mature miRNA samples in human, mouse, and Drosophila. We identified 4162 sites present in ∼80% of the pri-miRNAs and 574 sites in mature miRNAs. miRNA editing is prevalent in many tissue types in human. However, high-level editing is mostly found in neuronal tissues in mouse and Drosophila. Interestingly, the edited miRNAs in neuronal and non-neuronal tissues in human gain two distinct sets of new targets, which are significantly associated with cognitive and organ developmental functions, respectively. Furthermore, we reveal that miRNA editing profoundly affects asymmetric strand selection. Altogether, these data provide insight into the impact of RNA editing on miRNA biology and suggest that miRNA editing has recently gained non-neuronal functions in human.

    Footnotes

    • Received April 27, 2017.
    • Accepted October 25, 2017.

    This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date (see http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

    | Table of Contents

    Preprint Server