Abstract:

Abstract: microRNA (miRNA) is a class of non-coding small RNA molecules with roughly 22 nucleotides in length, regu-lating gene expression on post-transcriptional level and playing an important role in cell proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis process. Based on the conservation of miRNAs sequence, we compared the known miRNAs among five mam-mals, i.e., human, mouse, cattle, pig and dog with the sequence of sheep genome that is highly homologous to goat genome, published on the NCBI, and 11 candidate miRNAs were eventually obtained. RT-PCR analysis showed the expression of the 11 miRNAs in brain and 5 in liver, indicating that they might be novel miRNAs. The methodology provides an alternative approach to the exploration of new miRNAs in goat.