Distance distributions for position triplets for the 3′ and 5′ mature miRNAs, respectively.

For 3′ mature miRNAs, the triplet located at positions 7,8 and 9 nucleotides after the 22nd position is used. All distributions are estimated over the training set. A distance equal to 0 denotes that the triplet is part of the loop while a distance of nucleotides denotes that the triplet starts/ends at M nucleotides from the start (or the end, for the opposite strand) of the loop. Note that in both cases, position triplets are located inside the hairpin ( of the triplets) or in very close proximity to the start of the hairpin ( of the triplets is within nucleotides from the hairpin).