Rat is one of the most widely-used models in chemical safety evaluation and biomedical research. However, the knowledge about its microRNA (miRNA) expression patterns across multiple organs and various developmental stages is still limited. Here, we constructed a comprehensive rat miRNA expression BodyMap using a diverse collection of 320 RNA samples from 11 organs of both sexes of juvenile, adolescent, adult and aged Fischer 344 rats with four biological replicates per group. Following the Illumina TruSeq Small RNA protocol, an average of 5.1 million 50 bp single-end reads was generated per sample, yielding a total of 1.6 billion reads. The quality of the resulting miRNA-seq data was deemed to be high from raw sequences, mapped sequences, and biological reproducibility. Importantly, aliquots of the same RNA samples have previously been used to construct the mRNA BodyMap. The currently presented miRNA-seq dataset along with the existing mRNA-seq dataset from the same RNA samples provides a unique resource for studying the expression characteristics of existing and novel miRNAs, and for integrative analysis of miRNA-mRNA interactions, thereby facilitating better utilization of rats for biomarker discovery.

大鼠是化学品安全评价和生物医学研究中最广泛使用的模型之一。然而，关于其跨多个器官和各个发育阶段的 microRNA (miRNA) 表达模式的知识仍然有限。在这里，我们使用来自幼年、青少年、成年和老年 Fischer 344 大鼠的 11 个性别器官的 320 个 RNA 样本的不同集合构建了一个全面的大鼠 miRNA 表达 BodyMap，每组有 4 个生物重复。遵循 Illumina TruSeq Small RNA 协议，每个样本平均生成 510 万个 50 bp 单端读数，总共产生 16 亿个读数。从原始序列、映射序列和生物再现性来看，所得 miRNA-seq 数据的质量被认为是很高的。重要的是，相同 RNA 样品的等分试样先前已用于构建 mRNA BodyMap。目前提供的 miRNA-seq 数据集以及来自相同 RNA 样本的现有 mRNA-seq 数据集为研究现有和新型 miRNA 的表达特征以及 miRNA-mRNA 相互作用的综合分析提供了独特的资源，从而促进更好地利用大鼠用于发现生物标志物。