MicroRNA categorization using sequence motifs and k-mers

Background: Post-transcriptional gene dysregulation can be a hallmark of diseases like cancer and microRNAs ( miRNAs) play a key role in the modulation of translation efficiency. Known pre-miRNAs are listed in miRBase, and they have been discovered in a variety of organisms ranging from viruses and microbes to eukaryotic organisms. The computational detection of pre-miRNAs is of great interest, and such approaches usually employ machine learning to discriminate between miRNAs and other sequences. Many features have been proposed describing pre-miRNAs, and we have previously introduced the use of sequence motifs and k-mers as useful ones. There have been reports of xeno-miRNAs detected via next generation sequencing. However, they may be contaminations and to aid that important decisionmaking process, we aimed to establish a means to differentiate pre-miRNAs from different species.