I am working on predicting the non-coding genes, especially the ones that code for miRNAs. I am using a tool called mirMachine to predict the miRNA genes. The workflow has been properly illustrated in this article. The workflow requires a database of mature miRNA, downloaded as miRNA.fa. After the complete execution it generated two output files: 1. mature.fa.results.tbl.hairpins.fsa and 2. mature.fa.results.tbl.hairpins.tbl.out.tbl. According to the literature, the first file contains all the pre-miRNAs and the second file contains all the mature miRNAs.
I am now looking for a way to understand what these miRNAs do, their role. What should I be doing further to understand the biological role of these miRNAs. If I were to perform a BLAST, do I have to use the pre-miRNAs or mature miRNAs? Can someone help?
