Human Mirna Regulatory Factors And Target Genes Of The Gene Ontology Analysis

MicroRNAs(miRNAs) are a class of 22nt endogenous small RNAs that guide post-transcriptional gene silencing by base pairing with target mRNAs[1]. miRNAs play important roles in many signaling pathways, such as development, differentiation, proliferation and cell death[2]and at same time present tissue-specific expression patterns in normal human tissues and cancer cells[3-4]. A certain miRNA is regulated by transcription factors binding to the promoter of its pri-miRNA, and may targets many genes. miRNAs and their upstream regulators as well as target genes form a complex regulatory network.By using the Gene Ontolgy (GO) database [5] and GOmir software[6], we systematically extracted and analysed the information of three GO categories, 'biological process','molecular function'and'cellular component'attached to Each transcription factor (TF) and target gene of 382 miRNAs. The results revealed many "TFs/TFs" and "targets/targets" correlation, both positive and negative, suggesting potential co-regulation or antagonism. In particular, there are also correlations between TFs and targets of miRNAs, which suggests that TFs may indirectly influence miRNA's targets and take part in some biological processes.We went on applying GOmir[6] to the clustering of Gene Ontology terms of tissue-specific miRNAs. It's found that miRNAs expressed in different tissues differ in the biological processes they participates, the molecular functions they act and the cellular component they belong to. This suggests that tissue-specific miRNAs also get specific functions.Finally, we experimentally proved that the liver-specific miRNA, miR-122 targets several metabolism-related genes and indirectly influences mitochondria generation related genes.