Leoni Guido, Tramontano Anna
Department of Physics, Sapienza University, Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5-00184 Rome, Italy.
Department of Physics, Sapienza University, Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5-00184 Rome, Italy Istituto Pasteur-Fondazione Cenci Bolognetti, Viale Regina Elena 291, 00161 Rome, Italy
Nucleic Acids Res. 2016 May 19;44(9):e82. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkw043. Epub 2016 Jan 28.
It is well established that the correct identification of the messenger RNA targeted by a given microRNA (miRNA) is a difficult problem, and that available methods all suffer from low specificity. We hypothesize that the correct identification of the pairing should take into account the effect of the Argonaute protein (AGO), an essential catalyst of the recognition process. Therefore, we developed a strategy named MiREN for building and scoring three-dimensional models of the ternary complex formed by AGO, a miRNA and 22 nt of a target mRNA that putatively interacts with it. We show here that MiREN can be used to assess the likelihood that an RNA molecule is the target of a given miRNA and that this approach is more accurate than other existing methods, usually based on sequence or sequence-related features. Our results also suggest that AGO plays a relevant role in the selection of the miRNA targets. Our method can represent an additional step for refining predictions made by faster but less accurate classical methods for the identification of miRNA targets.
众所周知，正确识别给定微小RNA（miRNA）靶向的信使RNA是一个难题，并且现有方法都存在特异性低的问题。我们推测，正确识别配对应考虑AGO蛋白（AGO）的作用，AGO是识别过程的关键催化剂。因此，我们开发了一种名为MiREN的策略，用于构建和评分由AGO、miRNA和假定与其相互作用的靶mRNA的22个核苷酸形成的三元复合物的三维模型。我们在此表明，MiREN可用于评估RNA分子是给定miRNA靶标的可能性，并且这种方法比通常基于序列或序列相关特征的其他现有方法更准确。我们的结果还表明，AGO在miRNA靶标的选择中起相关作用。我们的方法可以作为一个额外的步骤，用于完善由速度更快但准确性较低的经典方法对miRNA靶标进行的预测。
