Description
In animals, microRNAs frequently form families with related sequences. The functional relevance of miRNA families and the relative contribution of family members to target repression have remained, however, largely unexplored. Here, we used the C. elegans miR-58 miRNA family, comprised primarily of four highly abundant members: miR-58.1, miR-80, miR-81 and miR-82, as a model to investigate the redundancy of miRNA family members and their impact on target expression in an in vivo setting. Overall design: RNA was extracted from different miR-58 family mutants (mir-58.1, mir-80; mir-58.1 and mir-80; mir-58.1; mir-81-82) and wild-type Bristol C. elegans strain at late L4 stage and submitted to transcriptome sequencing with Illumina HiSeq2000. The goal was to compare miR-58 target RNA expression and system-wide perturbations across various samples.