Identification of Novel MicroRNAs and Their Targets in Leukemia Cancers: A Computational Approach

1. Bartel DP. MicroRNAs: genomics, biogenesis, mechanism, and function. cell. 2004;116(2):281-97. 2. Calin GA, Sevignani C, Dumitru CD, Hyslop T, Noch E, Yendamuri S, Shimizu M, Rattan S, Bullrich F, Negrini M. Human microRNA genes are frequently located at fragile sites and genomic regions involved in cancers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2004;101(9):2999-3004. 3. Bandyopadhyay S, Mitra R, Maulik U, Zhang MQ. Development of the human cancer microRNA network. Silence. 2010;1(1):6. 4. Qian J, Siragam V, Lin J, Ma J, Deng Z. The role of microRNAs in the formation of cancer stem cells: Future directions for miRNAs. Hypothesis. 2011;9(1). MicroRNAs (miRNAs), one of the most abundant groups of regulatory non coding RNAs in multicellular organisms, play important roles in many fundamental cellular processes. More than four hundred miRNAs have been identified in humans and the deregulated expression of miRNA has been also shown in many cancers. Despite the postulated involvement of miRNAs in tumourigenesis, there are only a few examples where an oncogene or a tumour suppressor has been identified as a miRNA target. Here, we present an in silico analysis of potential miRNAMYC interactions. We showed evidence for the regulation of cMYC, one of the most potent and frequently deregulated oncogenes, via the predicted binding site in transcriptional and post transcriptional regions. In this work, bioinformatics approach for the prediction and validation of possible targets for miRNAs has been used. A list of putative targets is available and validation of which would be experimentally validated.