Comparative Analysis of microRNA Binding Site Distribution and microRNA-Mediated Gene Expression Repression of Oncogenes and Tumor Suppressor Genes

Genes

Jing Wang¹  Shuangmei Tian²  Degeng Wang²  Fangyuan Zhang³ 

[1] Department of Cancer Biology and Genetics, James Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43210, USA;Department of Environmental Toxicology, The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH), Texas Tech University, 1207 Gilbert Dr., Lubbock, TX 79416, USA;Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA;

关键词: microRNA;    miRNA binding sites;    miRNA-regulated repression;    tumor suppressor genes;    oncogenes;   

DOI  :  10.3390/genes13030481

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a family of short, noncoding RNAs that can regulate gene expression levels of over half of the human genome. Previous studies on the role of miRNAs in cancer showed overall widespread downregulation of miRNAs as a hallmark of human cancer, though individual miRNAs can be both tumor suppressive and oncogenic, and cancer genes are speculated to be more targeted by miRNA. However, the extents to which oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes (TSG) are controlled by miRNA have not been compared. To achieve this goal, we constructed lists of oncogenes and TSGs and compared them with each other, and with the whole protein-coding gene population, in terms of miRNA binding sites distribution and expression level changes upon genetic disruption of miRNA production. As expected, the results show that cancer gene mRNAs anchor more miRNA binding sites, and are under a higher degree of miRNA-mediated repression at both mRNA abundance and translation efficiency levels than the whole protein-coding gene population. Importantly, on average, TSG mRNAs are more highly targeted and regulated by miRNA than oncogene mRNAs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comparison of miRNA regulation of oncogenes and TSGs.

【 授权许可】

Unknown