Vertebrate microRNA genes and CpG-islands

A portion of five vertebrate species microRNA (miRNA) genes are found to associate with CpGislands. It is calculated that 74 of 462 (16.0%), 37 of 373 (9.9%), 25 of 234 (10.7%), 25 of 149 (16.8%) and 11 of 177 (6.2%) of the miRNA genes are located within 1000 bp of a CpG-island for human, mouse, rat, chicken and frog respectively. A statistical test is proposed to quantify the probability distribution of the relative distance between a miRNA gene and a CpG-island, the results suggested that there could be some spatial association between them. In the human and mouse samples the Fisher’s exact test indicated that some of the promoter-related miRNA genes are CpG-island-associated. These findings suggest that a potential role of these miRNAs related to CpG-island methylation, which deserve further investigation. A web-based interface has been implemented to facilitate data display, in which the vertebrate CpG-associated miRNA genes results are publicly available. Key-Words: microRNA; promoter regions; CpG-islands; methylation; gene regulation

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