Computational prediction of microRNA (miRNA) targets is a fundamental step towards the characterization of miRNA function and the understanding of their role in disease. A single miRNA can regulate hundreds of different gene transcripts through partial sequence complementarity and a single gene may be regulated by several miRNAs acting cooperatively. The remarkable advances made in recent years have allowed the identification of key features for functional miRNA binding sites. A plethora of prediction tools are now available, but their accuracies remain rather poor, as miRNA target recognition has revealed itself to be a very complex and dynamic mechanism, still only partially understood. In this chapter, the principles of miRNA target prediction in animals are presented, together with the most up-to-date and effective computational approaches and tools available.
CITATION STYLE
Laganà, A. (2015). Computational prediction of microRNA targets. In Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology (Vol. 887, pp. 231–252). Springer New York LLC. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22380-3_12
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