Overview of Computational and Experimental Methods to Identify Tissue-Specific MicroRNA Targets

Schmitz, Ulf

Abstract

As ubiquitous posttranscriptional regulators of gene expression, microRNAs (miRNAs) play key roles in cell physiology and function across taxa. In the last two decades, we have gained a good understanding about miRNA biogenesis pathways, modes of action, and consequences of miRNA-mediated gene regulation. More recently, research has focused on exploring causes for miRNA dysregulation, miRNA-mediated crosstalk between genes and signaling pathways, and the role of miRNAs in disease.This chapter discusses methods for the identification of miRNA-target interactions and causes for tissue-specific miRNA-target regulation. Computational approaches for predicting miRNA target sites and assessing tissue-specific target regulation are discussed. Moreover, there is an emphasis on features that affect miRNA target recognition and how high-throughput sequencing protocols can help in assessing miRNA-mediated gene regulation on a genome-wide scale. In addition, this chapter introduces some experimental approaches for the validation of miRNA targets as well as web-based resources sharing predicted and validated miRNA-target interactions.

Journal

Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.)

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2630

ISBN/ISSN

1940-6029

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Publisher

Humana Press

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Publisher Location

New York, NY, USA

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DOI

10.1007/978-1-0716-2982-6_12