Computational methods for the ab initio identification of novel microRNA in plants: a systematic review

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play a vital role as post-transcriptional regulators in gene expression. Experimental determination of miRNA sequence and structure is both expensive and time consuming. The next-generation sequencing revolution, which facilitated the rapid accumulation of biological data has brought biology into the "big data" domain. As such, developing computational methods to predict miRNAs has become an active area of inter-disciplinary research.

The objective of this systematic review is to focus on the developments of ab initio plant miRNA identification methods over the last decade.

Five databases were searched for relevant articles, according to a well-defined review protocol.

The search results were further filtered using the selection criteria that only included studies on novel plant miRNA identification using machine learning.

Relevant data from each study were extracted in order to carry out an analysis on their methodologies and findings.

Results depict that in the last decade, there were 20 articles published on novel miRNA identification methods in plants of which only 11 of them were primarily focused on plant microRNA identification. Our findings suggest a need for more stringent plant-focused miRNA identification studies.

Overall, the study accuracies are of a satisfactory level, although they may generate a considerable number of false negatives. In future, attention must be paid to the biological plausibility of computationally identified miRNAs to prevent further propagation of biologically questionable miRNA sequences.