The indigenous small non-coding RNAs, known as microRNAs (miRNAs), are important regulators of gene expression and many of them are evolutionarily conserved. Whether stem-loop RT-PCR, as a sensitive method, could be utilized to clone conserved miRNAs from non-model insects lacks information. Here, three miRNAs, sli-miR-14, sli-miR-2a and sli-bantam, were cloned from Spodoptera litura by stem-lo...