Metazoan MicroRNAs

The deep evolution of metazoan microRNAs.

microRNAs (miRNAs) are approximately 22-nucleotide noncoding RNA regulatory genes that are key players in cellular differentiation and homeostasis. They might also play important roles in shaping metazoan macroevolution. Previous studies have shown that miRNAs are continuously being added to metazoan genomes through time, and, once integrated into gene regulatory networks, show only rare mutati...

miRNAMap 2.0: genomic maps of microRNAs in metazoan genomes

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA molecules that can negatively regulate gene expression and thus control numerous cellular mechanisms. This work develops a resource, miRNAMap 2.0, for collecting experimentally verified microRNAs and experimentally verified miRNA target genes in human, mouse, rat and other metazoan genomes. Three computational tools, miRanda, RNAhybrid and TargetScan,...

MicroRNAs and metazoan macroevolution: insights into canalization, complexity, and the Cambrian explosion.

One of the most interesting challenges facing paleobiologists is explaining the Cambrian explosion, the dramatic appearance of most metazoan animal phyla in the Early Cambrian, and the subsequent stability of these body plans over the ensuing 530 million years. We propose that because phenotypic variation decreases through geologic time, because microRNAs (miRNAs) increase genic precision, by t...

Evolving “Metazoan” Development

A paradigm system for the evolution of multicellular animals is constructed. In many evolutionary models, the non-linearity of the genome-phenome mapping is ignored. However, the results of evolutionary paradigm systems that did include a non-trivial, complex genome-phenome mapping have suggested a framework joining seemingly conflicting evolutionary “points of view” like neutral evolution, Pun...

Basal Metazoan Sensory Evolution