Institute of Clinical Pharmacology, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China.
PLoS One. 2011;6(9):e25394. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025394. Epub 2011 Sep 27.
'Fine-tuning' of protein abundance makes microRNAs (miRNAs) pervasively implicated in human biology. Although targeting many mRNAs endows the power of single miRNA to regulate complex biological processes, its functional roles in a particular tissue will be inevitably restricted because only a subset of its target genes is expressed.
Here, we analyze the characteristics of miRNA regulation upon target genes according to tissue-specific gene expression by constructing tissue-specific protein interaction networks for ten main types of tissues in the human body.
Commonly expressed proteins are under more intensive but lower-cost miRNAs control than proteins with the tissue-specific expression. MiRNAs that target more commonly expressed genes usually regulate more tissue-specific genes. This is consistent with the previous finding that tissue-specific proteins tend to be functionally connected with commonly expressed proteins. But to a particular miRNA such a balance is not invariable among different tissues implying diverse tissue regulation modes executed by miRNAs.
These results suggest miRNAs that interact with more commonly expressed genes can be expected to play important tissue-specific roles.
蛋白质丰度的“微调”使得 microRNAs（miRNAs）广泛涉及人类生物学。虽然靶向许多 mRNAs 赋予了单个 miRNA 调节复杂生物过程的能力，但由于其靶基因的子集表达，其在特定组织中的功能作用将不可避免地受到限制。
在这里，我们通过构建人体十种主要类型组织的组织特异性蛋白质相互作用网络，根据组织特异性基因表达分析 miRNA 对靶基因的调控特征。
通常表达的蛋白质受到更密集但成本更低的 miRNA 的控制，而不是具有组织特异性表达的蛋白质。靶向通常表达基因的 miRNAs 通常调节更多的组织特异性基因。这与之前的发现一致，即组织特异性蛋白质往往与通常表达的蛋白质在功能上有联系。但是，对于特定的 miRNA 来说，这种平衡在不同组织中并不是不变的，这意味着 miRNA 执行不同的组织调节模式。
这些结果表明，与更多通常表达的基因相互作用的 miRNAs 可以预期发挥重要的组织特异性作用。
