ABSTRACT In recent years, microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as a major class of regulatory genes, present in most metazoans and important for a diverse range of biological functions. Because

experimental identification of miRNA targets is difficult, there has been an explosion of computational target predictions. Although the initial round of predictions resulted in very diverse

results, subsequent computational and experimental analyses suggested that at least a certain class of conserved miRNA targets can be confidently predicted and that this class of targets is

large, covering, for example, at least 30% of all human genes when considering about 60 conserved vertebrate miRNA gene families. Most recent approaches have also shown that there are

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our FAQs * Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS GGA-MIRNOME, A MICRORNA-SEQUENCING DATASET FROM CHICK EMBRYONIC TISSUES Article Open access 31 January 2022

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lin-41 3′ UTR. _Genes Dev._ 18, 132–137 (2004). Article  CAS  Google Scholar  Download references ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a perspective in a new and fast-moving field is necessarily

selective on which papers are being cited. However, I would like to apologize to all authors whose papers were not included. I also want to thank A. Stark, U. Ohler and S. Lall for a

critical reading of the manuscript and helpful suggestions, and my collaborators and members of the miRNA/RNAi community for many interesting and stimulating discussions. J. Thierry-Mieg and

D. Thierry-Mieg as well as W. Majoros and U. Ohler shared unpublished data with me. Finally, I thank A. Stark and S. Cohen for permission to use Figure 2. AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND

AFFILIATIONS * Center for Comparative Functional Genomics Department of Biology, 100 Washington Square East, New York, 10003, New York, USA Nikolaus Rajewsky Authors * Nikolaus Rajewsky View

author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The author declares no competing financial interests. RIGHTS AND

PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Rajewsky, N. microRNA target predictions in animals. _Nat Genet_ 38 (Suppl 6), S8–S13 (2006).

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