Regulatory conservation of protein coding and microRNA genes in vertebrates: lessons from the opossum genome

Table 1 Conservation in the 5 kilobases upstream sequences in all protein coding and intergenic miRNA genes

Human versus	Protein coding genes			Intergenic miRNA genes			Relative conservation
	Number of orthologous	Block coverage	Average block identity	Number of orthologous	Block coverage	Average block identity
Chimp	23,643	93.03%	98.15%	144	93.46%	98.51%	0.46%
Mouse*	22,790	23.30%*	73.53%	142	36.17%*	74.72%	55.24%
Rat*	22,161	22.46%*	73.49%	140	34.95%*	74.68%	55.61%
Dog*	23,276	44.36%*	75.58%	145	61.72%*	76.96%	39.13%
Opossum*	17,334	7.28%*	74.90%	104	11.65%*	76.08%	60.03%
Chicken	8,087	4.55%	74.87%	54	6.08%	76.80%	33.63%
Fugu	6,257	4.13%	72.17%	47	2.73%	73.65%	-33.90%
Tetraodon	7,821	3.43%	72.10%	60	2.31%	73.40%	-32.65%

This table lists the number of genes orthologous to human genes in each of the genomes tested, the percentage of upstream sequence conservation (in >65% block identity), and the weighted average within block identity. Relative conservation (in terms of block coverage) is also listed for the microRNA (miRNA) versus protein coding genes. *Species for which the block coverage of miRNA gene upstream regions is statistically significantly higher than that of the promoters of the protein coding genes.

ISSN: 1474-760X