Ranade Aarati R, Weiss Glen J
Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, AZ, USA.
Methods Mol Biol. 2011;700:145-52. doi: 10.1007/978-1-61737-954-3_10.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are single-stranded, small RNA molecules of 21-23 nucleotides that are primarily involved in the regulation of gene expression. A number of recent studies have shown that miRNAs play a vital role in signaling pathways important for human oncogenesis and may hold promise as potential biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutics. Microarray-based expression analysis is an emerging and powerful strategy for initially identifying candidate miRNAs, which can then be correlated to specific biological process such as carcinogenesis, and eventually developed as a molecular signature for a disease state. This chapter presents a protocol for miRNA microarray profiling using the Agilent platform, which is one of the most widely utilized technologies currently available.
微小RNA（miRNA）是一类单链、由21 - 23个核苷酸组成的小RNA分子，主要参与基因表达的调控。近期的多项研究表明，miRNA在对人类肿瘤发生至关重要的信号通路中发挥着关键作用，有望成为癌症诊断、预后评估及治疗的潜在生物标志物。基于微阵列的表达分析是一种新兴且强大的策略，可初步鉴定候选miRNA，随后将其与特定生物学过程（如致癌作用）相关联，并最终开发为疾病状态的分子特征。本章介绍了使用安捷伦平台进行miRNA微阵列分析的方案，该平台是目前应用最广泛的技术之一。
