The phrase "a star sequence" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts related to astronomy, programming, or any field where a sequence of stars or star-like elements is relevant.
Example: "The astronomer analyzed a star sequence to determine the life cycle of the stars involved."
Alternatives: "a stellar sequence" or "a sequence of stars".
Finally, miRDeep assigned a score to each read based on: (a) seed sequence homology to known human miRNA, (b) presence of a star sequence, (c) minimum free energy (RNAfold), (d) energetic stability (Randfold), (e) frequency of reads that correspond to Dicer processing.
It is noteworthy that both of these putative miRNAs occur together with a star sequence.
Apart from read count filter of ≥10 and presence of a star sequence, we used MiRDeep Score >1 as a cut-off.
Among the 11 new miRNAs predicted by Zhao et al. [ 14] bna-miR2203, bna-miR2204 and bna-miR2207 were also predicted in this study and bna-miR2202 was predicted to be a star sequence.
Finally, miRDeep assigned a score to each read based on: (i) seed sequence homology to known human miRNA, (ii) the presence of a star sequence, (iii) minimum free energy (RNAfold), (iv) energetic stability (Randfold), and (v) frequency of reads that correspond to Dicer processing.
To do so, we first assessed the existence of a significantly stable precursor secondary structure (see Methods) around an abundant fragment covered by reads, and then verified that this putative miRNA locus was indeed located over a stem together with a proper star sequence, also represented by read accumulation (Methods and Additional file 3: Figure S1 and Additional file 4: Figure S2).
However, the read accumulation did not allow the identification of a precise star sequence position.
Based on the thermodynamic stability of each end of this duplex, one of the strands is believed to be preferentially incorporated into the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), producing a biologically active miRNA and an inactive miRNA star sequence [9].
Occasionally, the star sequence or a variant of the star sequence from the opposite hairpin arm of the miRNA precursor was more abundant than the annotated miRNA.
From the eliminated data also those were considered with a signal intensity of the star sequence higher than 7.
(C and D) DraIII digests a star site sequence in an asymmetrical manner.
