Modules of human micro-RNA co-target network

Abstract

Human micro RNAs (miRNAs) target about 90% of the coding genes and form a complex regulatory network. We study the community structure of the miRNA co-target network considering miRNAs as the nodes which are connected by weighted links. The weight of link that connects a pair of miRNAs denote the total number of common transcripts targeted by that pair. We argue that the network consists of about 74 modules, quite similar to the components (or clusters) obtained earlier [Online J Bioinformatics, 10,280], indicating that the components of the miRNA co-target network are self organized in a way to maximize the modularity.