Combined Computational and Experimental Analyses of Gene Regulation by MicroRNAs

项目摘要 microRNA（miRNAs）是一类非编码小RNA分子，其下调细胞凋亡， 基因靶点的表达。计算和实验研究都表明， 成千上万的人类蛋白质编码基因受到miRNAs的调控，miRNAs是人类蛋白质编码基因的主要调控因子。 许多重要生物过程的调节剂。miRNA表达的变化可以 深刻的生物影响，导致各种人类疾病。由于其在以下方面的关键作用， 在基因表达调控方面，miRNAs的功能研究已成为目前研究的热点之一。 近年来，生物学研究领域活跃。 尽管miRNA研究进展迅速，但该领域的一个主要障碍是缺乏对miRNA的研究。 强大的计算和实验方法的功能miRNA分析。由此资助 NIGMS R01赠款在过去十年中，我们取得了重大进展，并发表了 miRNA和基因表达研究的方法很多。我们建立的方法 被科学界广泛采用。特别是，我们已经开发了一种miRNA， 靶向预测工具miRDB已迅速成为主要的生物信息学资源， 被成千上万的出版物引用。此外，我们还开发了创新的 实验方法来操纵miRNAs的表达水平。建立在我们最近的 进展，我们建议进行联合计算和实验分析， 继续开发用于miRNA研究的尖端技术。我们的工作预计将发挥 通过为功能性miRNA提供有价值的资源，在miRNA领域产生重大影响 分析.

Project Summary MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a family of small non-coding RNA molecules that downregulate the expression of their gene targets. Both computational and experimental studies have shown that thousands of human protein-coding genes are regulated by miRNAs, and miRNAs are master regulators of many important biological processes. Changes in miRNA expression can have profound biological impacts, leading to a variety of human diseases. Due to their critical roles in gene expression regulation, functional characterization of miRNAs has become one of the most active research fields in biology in recent years. Despite rapid progress in miRNA research, one major obstacle in this field is the lack of robust computational and experimental methods for functional miRNA analysis. Funded by this NIGMS R01 grant over the past ten years, we have made significant progress and published many methods on miRNA and gene expression studies. The methods we established have been widely adopted by the scientific community. In particular, we have developed a miRNA target prediction tool, miRDB, which has quickly become a major bioinformatics resource and has been cited by thousands of publications. Moreover, we have developed innovative experimental methods to manipulate the expression levels of miRNAs. Built on our recent progress, we propose to perform combined computational and experimental analyses to continue to develop cutting-edge technologies for miRNA studies. Our work is expected to exert a significant impact in the miRNA field by providing valuable resources for functional miRNA analysis.