In silico identification of miRNAs and their targets from the expressed sequence tags of Raphanus sativus

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a novel growing family of endogenous, small, non- coding, single-stranded RNA molecules directly involved in regulating gene expression at the posttranscriptional level. High conservation of miRNAs in plant provides the foundation for identification of new miRNAs in other plant species through homology alignment. Here, previous known plant miRNAs were BLASTed against the Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) database of Raphanus sativus, and according to a series of filtering criteria, a total of 48 miRNAs belonging to 9 miRNA families were identified, and 16 potential target genes of them were subsequently predicted, most of which seemed to encode transcription factors or enzymes participating in regulation of development, growth and other physiological processes. Overall, our findings lay the foundation for further researches of miRNAs function in R.sativus.