Systematic exploration of autonomous modules in noisy microRNA-target networks for testing the generality of the ceRNA hypothesis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In the competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) hypothesis, different transcripts communicate through a competition for their common targeting microRNAs (miRNAs). Individual examples have clearly shown the functional importance of ceRNA in gene regulation and cancer biology. It remains unclear to what extent gene expression levels are regulated by ceRNA in general. One major hurdle to studying this problem is the intertwined connections in miRNA-target networks, which makes it difficult to isolate the effects of individual miRNAs.

Results

Here we propose computational methods for decomposing a complex miRNA-target network into largely autonomous modules called microRNA-target biclusters (MTBs). Each MTB contains a relatively small number of densely connected miRNAs and mR

SUBMITTER: Yip DK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4367885 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature