Targeting miRNA for therapeutics using a micronome based method for identification of miRNA-mRNA pairs and validation of key regulator miRNA

Abstract

MicroRNAs are 18–22 bp long non-coding sequences and play a critical role in diverse biological processes, through modulation of gene expression at the post-transcriptional level by binding at the 3′-untranslated region of target mRNA. Consequent upon the discovery of structural and functional features of miRNA targeting, several molecular methods have been developed to identify miRNA targets. However, these methods suffer several drawbacks, including technical challenges, requirement of high cell volumes, inability to differentiate between direct and indirect targets, cell/tissue as well as experimental-specificity and imprecise binding site information. Alternatively in silico approach enables the exploration of the potential miRNA-mRNA pairs to investigate signature miRNA and proteins involved in the signaling of various diseases. Here, we describe micronome-based standard method for identification of miRNA-mRNA pairs as well as validation of key regulator miRNA.