Many of the known microRNAs are encoded in polycistronic transcripts. Here, we reconstruct the evolutionary history of the mir17 microRNA clusters which consist of miR-17, miR-18, miR-19a, miR-19b, miR-20, miR-25, miR-92, miR-93, miR-106a, and miR-106b. The history of this cluster is governed by an initial phase of local (tandem) duplications, a series of duplications of entire clusters and subsequent loss of individual microRNAs from the resulting paralogous clusters. The complex history of the mir17 microRNA family appears to be closely linked to the early evolution of the vertebrate lineage.

The thermodynamics of RNA-RNA interaction consists of two components: the energy necessary to make a potential binding region accessible, i.e., unpaired, and the energy gained from the base pairing of the two interaction partners. We show here that both components can be efficiently computed using an improved variant of RNAup. The method is then applied to a set of bacterial small RNAs involved in translational control. In all cases of biologically active sRNA target interactions, the target sites predicted by RNAup is in perfect agreement with literature. In addition to prediction of target site location, RNAup can be also be used to determine the mode of sRNA action. Using information about target site location and the accessibility change resulting form sRNA binding we can discriminate between positive and negative regulators of translation.