Improvement of meta-database on microRNA target genes for integrative analysis of microRNA and mRNA

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), which are non-cording RNAs, regulate mRNAs. Recently, the role of miRNAs in cancer has attracted attention, and expression analysis of both miRNAs and mRNAs is increasing. Ohki proposed an integrated analysis method for small size expression data and identified three differentially expressed miRNAs. However, enriched functions were extracted from only one of the three.In this study, the meta-database, which we developed, on miRNA target genes was updated to extract enriched functions from the others. Also, a database on experimentally confirmed target genes was newly included in the meta-database. Based on the new meta-database, enriched functions were extracted from all the three miRNAs. Most of the enriched functions have some relation to cancer biology.