<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<article article-type="research-article" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">
    <front>
        <journal-meta>
            <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">TOBIOJ</journal-id>
            <journal-title>The Open Biology Journal</journal-title>
            <abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="pubmed">Open Biol. J.</abbrev-journal-title>
            <issn pub-type="epub">1874-1967</issn>
            <publisher>
                <publisher-name>Bentham Open</publisher-name>
            </publisher>
        </journal-meta>
        <article-meta>
            <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">TOBIOJ-5-23</article-id>
            <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.2174/1874196701205010023</article-id>
            <article-categories>
                <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
                    <subject>Biology</subject>
                </subj-group>
            </article-categories>
            <title-group>
                <article-title>Computational Tools for Genome-Wide miRNA Prediction and Study</article-title>
            </title-group>
            <contrib-group>
                <contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>B. Malas</surname>
                        <given-names>Tareq</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">1</xref>
                </contrib>
                <contrib contrib-type="author" corresp="yes">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Ravasi</surname>
                        <given-names>Timothy </given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">2</xref>
                    <xref ref-type="corresp" rid="cor1">&#x002A;</xref>
                </contrib>
            </contrib-group>
            <aff id="aff1">
                <label>1</label>Division of Biological and Environmental Sciences &#x0026; Engineering, Division of Applied Mathematics and Computer
Sciences, Computational Biosciences Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology,
Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia</aff>
            <aff id="aff2">
                <label>2</label>King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Thuwal 23955 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Division of Medical
Genetics, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA</aff>
            <author-notes>
                <corresp id="cor1">
                    <label>&#x002A;</label>Address correspondence to this author at the King Abdullah University of
Science and Technology Thuwal 23955 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Division of
Medical Genetics, Department of Medicine, University of California, San
Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA; Tel: +966-5-44700067,
Fax: +966-2-8020127; E-mail:  <email xlink:href="timothy.ravasi@kaust.edu.sa">timothy.ravasi@kaust.edu.sa</email></corresp>
            </author-notes>
            <pub-date pub-type="epub">
                <day>02</day>
                <month>11</month>
                <year>2012</year>
            </pub-date>
            <pub-date pub-type="collection">
                <year>2012</year>
            </pub-date>
            <volume>5</volume>
            <fpage>23</fpage>
            <lpage>30</lpage>
            <history>
                <date date-type="received">
                    <day>20</day>
                    <month>05</month>
                    <year>2009</year>
                </date>
                <date date-type="rev-recd">
                    <day>20</day>
                    <month>10</month>
                    <year>2009</year>
                </date>
                <date date-type="accepted">
                    <day>29</day>
                    <month>10</month>
                    <year>2009</year>
                </date>
            </history>
            <permissions>
                <copyright-statement>&#x00A9; 2012 Malas and Ravasi</copyright-statement>
                <copyright-year>2012</copyright-year>
                <copyright-holder>Tareq B. Malas</copyright-holder>
                <license license-type="open-access" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode">
                    <p>This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: <uri xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode</uri>. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.</p>
                </license>
            </permissions>
            <abstract>
                <p>MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are single-stranded non-coding RNA susually of 22 nucleotidesin length that play an
important post-transcriptional regulation role in many organisms. MicroRNAs bind a seed sequence to the 3'-untranslated
region (UTR) region of the target messenger RNA (mRNA), inducing degradation or inhibition of translation and
resulting in a reduction in the protein level. This regulatory mechanism is central to many biological processes and
perturbation could lead to diseases such as cancer. Given the biological importance, of miRNAs, there is a great need to
identify and study their targets and functions. However, miRNAs are very difficult to clone in the lab and this has
hindered the identification of novel miRNAs. Next-generation sequencing coupled with new computational tools has
recently evolved to help researchers efficiently identify large numbers of novel miRNAs. In this review, we describe
recent miRNA prediction tools and discuss their priorities, advantages and disadvantages.</p>
            </abstract>
            <kwd-group>
                <title>Keywords</title>
                <kwd>miRNAs</kwd>
                <kwd>Computational prediction tools</kwd>
                <kwd>Gene regulation</kwd>
                <kwd>Biological databases</kwd>
                <kwd>Genomics</kwd>
            </kwd-group>
        </article-meta>
    </front>
</article>
