Quantitative analysis for identifying important disease-related microRNAs

Irregularities in gene expression, and therefore, overproduction or underproduction of essential proteins, arethe key reasons for the development of various diseases. Lately, one of the treatment methods that researchersare exploring is to investigate the regulatory mechanisms of gene expression. MicroRNAs are one of theseregulatory factors that bind to the genes in specific regions called the binding sites and prevent the expressionof proteins. As a result, if microRNAs fail to execute their function, protein production will be out of thenormal range.Studying the microRNAs involved in a disease can potentially lead to finding a cure for that disease; however,finding the relevant microRNAs is very complex since one microRNA can target multiple genes, and on theother hand, one particular gene can be regulated by multiple microRNAs. Therefore, identifying diseaserelatedmicroRNAs requires extensive experiments and takes a deal of time and resources. The purpose ofthis study is to facilitate the work of researchers by ranking the disease-related microRNAs based on theirimportance in disease. The approach of this study consists of ۱) mining the well-established disease-gene andmicroRNA-target association databases; ۲) counting the number of disease-associated genes that are targetedby each microRNA; and ۳) calculating the proportion of disease-associated microRNA targets relative to allof the predicted targets of each microRNA.Finally, according to the timeliness, the proposed approach of this study has been applied to three diseases,coronavirus, covid-۱۹, and B.۱.۱.۷. This approach resulted in the identification of hsa-miR-۵۴۸c-۳p and hsamiR-۵۵۱a as the most important microRNA associated with coronavirus, hsa-miR-۶۵۲-۳p and hsa-miR-۵۴۸c-۳p associated with covid-۱۹ and hsa-miR-۴۲۳-۵p and hsa-miR-۴۴۴۶-۳p associated with B.۱.۱.۷.

کلیدواژه ها:

MicroRNAs ، Gene expression ، Protein ، Counting ، Coronavirus