National Medical Research Center for Cardiology, 121552 Moscow, Russia.
Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, 117997 Moscow, Russia.
Int J Mol Sci. 2020 Dec 18;21(24):9670. doi: 10.3390/ijms21249670.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, single-stranded, non-coding ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules, which are involved in the regulation of main biological processes, such as apoptosis or cell proliferation and differentiation, through sequence-specific interaction with target mRNAs. In this study, we propose a workflow for predicting miRNAs function by analyzing the structure of the network of their target genes. This workflow was applied to study the functional role of miR-375 in the heart muscle (myocardium), since this miRNA was previously shown to be associated with heart diseases, and data on its function in the myocardium are mostly unclear. We identified and as key genes in the miR-375 regulated network and predicted the possible function of miR-375 in the heart muscle, consisting mainly in the regulation of the Rho-GTPases-dependent signaling pathways. We implemented our algorithm for miRNA function prediction into a Python module, which is available at GitHub.
微小 RNA（miRNA）是一类短链、单链、非编码的 RNA 分子，通过与靶 mRNAs 的序列特异性相互作用，参与调节细胞凋亡或增殖和分化等主要的生物学过程。在这项研究中，我们提出了一种通过分析其靶基因网络结构来预测 miRNA 功能的工作流程。该工作流程用于研究 miR-375 在心肌中的功能作用，因为先前已经表明该 miRNA 与心脏病有关，并且关于其在心肌中的功能的数据大多不清楚。我们鉴定出和作为 miR-375 调控网络中的关键基因，并预测了 miR-375 在心肌中的可能功能，主要包括调节 Rho-GTPases 依赖的信号通路。我们将 miRNA 功能预测算法实现到一个 Python 模块中，并将其在 GitHub 上开源。
