Figure 3.

Less Conserved miRNAs Diverge More between A. thaliana and A. lyrata Than Do More Conserved miRNAs.

(A) A sketch showing the five regions of MIRNA hairpins that were analyzed. For convenience, the mature miRNA is shown on the 5′ arm, although in reality it can be either on the 5′ arm or 3′ arm.

(B) Average sequence divergence between more conserved A. thaliana and A. lyrata MIRNA hairpins. Both 5′-arm and 3′-arm mature miRNAs were tallied and displayed together. To account for differences in lengths among the population of hairpins, the five regions were each scaled to seven bins. Bars indicate the standard errors of the means.

(C) As in (B) for less conserved MIRNAs.

(D) As in (B) for each nucleotide position within mature miRNAs from more conserved families.

(E) As in (D) for less conserved families.