Nick C.T. Schopman, Stephan Heynen, Joost Haasnoot and Ben Berkhout

Nick C.T. Schopman

Laboratory of Experimental Virology, Department of Medical Microbiology, Center for Infection and Immunity Amsterdam (CINIMA), Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam; Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Stephan Heynen

Laboratory of Experimental Virology, Department of Medical Microbiology, Center for Infection and Immunity Amsterdam (CINIMA), Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam; Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Joost Haasnoot

Laboratory of Experimental Virology, Department of Medical Microbiology, Center for Infection and Immunity Amsterdam (CINIMA), Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam; Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Ben Berkhout

Corresponding author: b.berkhout@amc.uva.nl
Laboratory of Experimental Virology, Department of Medical Microbiology, Center for Infection and Immunity Amsterdam (CINIMA), Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam; Amsterdam, the Netherlands

The rapid release of new data from DNA genome sequencing projects has led to a variety of misannotations in public databases. Our results suggest that next generation sequencing approaches are particularly prone to such misannotations. Two related miRNA candidates did recently enter the miRBase database, miR-1274b and miR-1274a, but they share identical 18-nucleotide stretches with tRNA^Lys3 and tRNA^Lys5, respectively. The possibility that the small RNA fragments that led to the description of these two miRNAs originated from the two tRNAs was examined. The ratio of the miR-1274b:miR-1274a fragments does closely resemble the known tRNA lys3:lys5 ratio in the cell. Furthermore, the proposed miRNA hairpins have a very low prediction score and the proposed miRNA genes are in fact endogenous retroviral elements. We searched for other miRNA-mimics in the human genome and found more examples of tRNA-miRNA mimicry. We propose that the corresponding miRNAs should be validated in more detail, as the small RNA fragments that led to their description are likely derived from tRNA processing.