Hi everyone, I am using miRNA-mRNA interaction information, when I searched TargetScan v7.2. I see that they have mainly 2 types of data: conserved and unconserved. I read their FAQs and see the definition of "conserve", so if I want to investigate the regulatory network, what should I use? I'm still not getting the definition of "conserve". Could somebody please explain this term? I don't have much biological background. Your help is really appreciated
For miRNA families in TargetScanHuman 7, conservation of some families were modified from those in TargetScan 6, based on careful analysis of multiple-sequence miRNA alignments. For miRNA families in TargetScan 6 (Human and Mouse), conservation cutoffs are as if Friedman et al. (2009):
broadly conserved = conserved across most vertebrates, usually to zebrafish (Supplemental Table 1 of Friedman et al.)
conserved = conserved across most mammals, but usually not beyond placental mammals (Supplemental Tables 2 & 3 of Friedman et al.)
poorly conserved = all others
