中文摘要：

微小RNAs（microRNAs，miRNAs）是长度约为22个核苷酸（nt）的内源性非编码小分子RNA。miRNA作为重要的基因调节因子，通过多种机制抑制其靶mRNA的表达。miRNA的表达和／或功能异常与人类多种疾病密切相关。因此，近年miR—NA与人类疾病的相关研究备受关注，寻找miRNA基因显得尤为重要。过去对miRNA基因进行研究的范围较为局限，获得的新miRNA基因很少。目前，对miRNA基因目录的补充主要依赖于复杂计算工具的发展，随着计算工具的发展获得多种简易的寻找miRNA基因的方法，但对miRNA基因目录的补充仍未能起有效作用。本文在简单介绍动植物miRNA生物起源和功能及作用机制的基础上，主要关注动植物miRNA基因寻找的计算方法，可望为探索动植物miRNAs基因寻找的新的计算方法提供有价值的参考。

英文摘要：

MicroRNA （miRNA）is a kind of small non-coding endogenous RNA molecules which is -22nt in length. As important regulatory factor of gene, miRNA inhibits the expression of its target mRNA, through a variety of mechanism. Abnormality of miRNA expression and function is closely related with various human diseases. Therefore, people has paid much attention to study the correlation between miRNA and human disease in recent years, especially finding the miRNA genes. In past years, the range of studies about miRNA genes is limited, which have a great limitation of finding new miRNA genes. The supplement of our catalogue of miRNA genes owe much to the development of sophisticated computational tools, which produce many simple methods. However, these still can＇ t have a effectively influence on the supplement of the catalogue. In these article, we mainly intro- duce the computational methods for miRNA gene finding in animals and plants, based on introducing the biogenesis and function of miRNA, which will provide some valueable reference for the finding of the next generation of com- putational methods.