Looking for a needle in a haystack: de novo phenotypic target identification reveals Hippo pathway-mediated miR-202 regulation of egg production.

ABSTRACT: Understanding microRNA (miRNA) functions has been hampered by major difficulties in identifying their biological target(s). Currently, the main limitation is the lack of a suitable strategy to identify biologically relevant targets among a high number of putative targets. Here we provide a proof of concept of successful de novo (i.e. without prior knowledge of its identity) miRNA phenotypic target (i.e. target whose de-repression contributes to the phenotypic outcomes) identification from RNA-seq data. Using the medaka mir-202 knock-out (KO) model in which inactivation leads to a major organism-level reproductive phenotype, including reduced egg production, we introduced novel criteria including limited fold-change in KO and low interindividual variability in gene expression to reduce the

SUBMITTER: Janati-Idrissi S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10810276 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature