Fig 2. Illustration of an example miRNA:eTM pairing and conserved binding site.

Pairing the Z. mays miRNA, 528b-5p-19. (a) Potential binding sites of plant miRNAs were scanned within novel and known lncRNA sequences using a set of rules previously described by Wu et al[17]. (b) Several conserved miRNA binding sites were identified among eTMs. While the first eight bases (brown-colored) of target mimic site are perfectly preserved across the sequences, there are mismatches within bulge (blue-colored) and tail (green-colored) regions.