%0 Journal Article %A Mu, Dashuai %A Li, Chenyang %A Shi, Liang %A Zhang, Xuchen %A Ren, Ang %A Zhao, Mingwen %D 2015 %I Begell House %K medicinal mushrooms, Ganoderma lucidum, bioinformatics, microRNA, target gene %N 8 %P 783-797 %R 10.1615/IntJMedMushrooms.v17.i8.80 %T Bioinformatic Identification of Potential MicroRNAs and Their Targets in the Lingzhi or Reishi Medicinal Mushroom Ganoderma lucidum (Higher Basidiomycetes) %U https://www.dl.begellhouse.com/journals/708ae68d64b17c52,5c93eb0962bab6ac,79f8c11c419658e5.html %V 17 %X MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small, endogenous, noncoding RNA molecules that negatively regulate gene expression at the transcriptional or the post-transcriptional level. Although a large number of miRNAs have been identified in many species, especially model plants and animals, miRNAs in fungi remain largely unknown. In this study, based on a database of expressed sequence tags in Ganoderma lucidum, 89 potential miRNAs were identified using computational methods. Real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis of miRNA-like samples prepared from G. lucidum at different development stages revealed that miRNA-like RNAs were differentially expressed in different stages. Furthermore, a total of 28 potential targets were found based on near-perfect or perfect complementarity between the randomly selected 9 miRNA-like RNAs and the target sequences, and potential targets for G. lucidum miRNA-like RNAs were predicted. Finally, we studied the expression pattern of 4 target genes in 3 different development stages of G. lucidum to further understand the mechanism of interaction between miRNA-like RNAs and their target genes. Our analysis paves the way toward identifying fungal miRNA-like RNAs that might be involved in various physiological and cellular differentiation processes. %8 2015-11-09