Fan Yannan, Habib Maria, Xia Jianguo
Institute of Parasitology, McGill University, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, Canada.
Department of Animal Science, McGill University, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, Canada.
PeerJ. 2018 Sep 28;6:e5650. doi: 10.7717/peerj.5650. eCollection 2018.
Xeno-miRNAs are microRNAs originating from exogenous species detected in host biofluids. A growing number of studies have suggested that many of these xeno-miRNAs may be involved in cross-species interactions and manipulations. To date, hundreds of xeno-miRNAs have been reported in different hosts at various abundance levels. Based on computational predictions, many more miRNAs could be potentially transferred to human circulation system. There is a clear need for bioinformatics resources and tools dedicated to xeno-miRNA annotations and their potential functions. To address this need, we have systematically curated xeno-miRNAs from multiple sources, performed target predictions using well-established algorithms, and developed a user-friendly web-based tool-Xeno-miRNet-to allow researchers to search and explore xeno-miRNAs and their potential targets within different host species. Xeno-miRNet currently contains 1,702 (including both detected and predicted) xeno-miRNAs from 54 species and 98,053 potential gene targets in six hosts. The web application is freely available at http://xeno.mirnet.ca.
异种微小RNA（xeno-miRNAs）是在宿主生物流体中检测到的源自外源物种的微小RNA。越来越多的研究表明，许多此类异种微小RNA可能参与跨物种相互作用和操控。迄今为止，已在不同宿主中以各种丰度水平报道了数百种异种微小RNA。基于计算预测，可能有更多的微小RNA会转移到人体循环系统中。显然需要专门用于异种微小RNA注释及其潜在功能的生物信息学资源和工具。为满足这一需求，我们系统地整理了来自多个来源的异种微小RNA，使用成熟的算法进行靶标预测，并开发了一个用户友好的基于网络的工具——Xeno-miRNet，以便研究人员搜索和探索不同宿主物种内的异种微小RNA及其潜在靶标。Xeno-miRNet目前包含来自54个物种的1702个（包括已检测到的和预测的）异种微小RNA以及六个宿主中的98053个潜在基因靶标。该网络应用程序可在http://xeno.mirnet.ca免费获取。
