Pandey Priyanka, Srivastava Prashant K, Pandey Shree P
National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani, India.
Division of Brain Sciences, Department of Medicine, Imperial College, London, UK.
Methods Mol Biol. 2019;1932:99-107. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-9042-9_7.
microRNAs (miRNAs) are the central component of an important layer of regulation of gene expression at posttranscriptional level. In plants, miRNAs target the transcripts in a highly complementary sequence-dependent manner. Extensive research is being made to study genome-wide miRNA-mediated regulation of gene expression, which has resulted in the development of many tools for in silico prediction of miRNA targets. Although several tools have been developed for predicting miRNA targets in model plants, genome-wide analysis of miRNA targets is still a challenge for non-model species that lack dedicated tools. Here, we describe an in silico procedure for studying miRNA-mediated interactions in plants, which is based on the fact that canonical miRNA-target sites are highly complementary, the miRNAs negatively regulate the expression of their target genes, and miRNAs may form regulatory networks as one miRNA may target more than one transcript and vice versa to modulate and fine-tune expression of the genome.
微小RNA（miRNA）是转录后水平基因表达重要调控层面的核心组成部分。在植物中，miRNA以高度互补的序列依赖性方式靶向转录本。目前正在进行广泛研究以探究全基因组范围内miRNA介导的基因表达调控，这促成了许多用于miRNA靶标计算机预测的工具的开发。尽管已经开发了多种用于预测模式植物中miRNA靶标的工具，但对于缺乏专用工具的非模式物种而言，全基因组范围内分析miRNA靶标仍是一项挑战。在此，我们描述了一种用于研究植物中miRNA介导的相互作用的计算机程序，该程序基于以下事实：典型的miRNA靶位点高度互补，miRNA负向调节其靶基因的表达，并且miRNA可能形成调控网络，因为一个miRNA可能靶向多个转录本，反之亦然，以调节和微调基因组的表达。
