Mining of miRNAs from EST data in Dendrobium nobile.

Dendrobium nobile is an orchid species highly popular for its therapeutic properties and is often used as a medicinal herb. Documenting miRNA-target associations in D. nobile is an important step to facilitate functional genomics studies in this species. Therefore, it is of interest to identify miRNA sequences from EST data available in public databases using known techniques and tools. We report 14 potential miRNAs from three ESTs of D. nobile. They belong to 3 miRNA families (miR390, miR528 and miR414) linking to transcription factor regulation, signal transduction, DNA and protein binding, and various cellular processes covering 34 different metabolic networks in KEGG. These results help in the understanding of miRNA-mRNAs functional networks in Dendrobium nobile.