Application of Computational Tools for Identification of miRNA and Their Target SNPs

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-protein-coding RNAs that play important regulatory roles by targeting for cleavage or translational repression and involved in diverse biological functions. Accumulation of large amount of biological data indicates that miRNAs can function as tumor suppressors and oncogenes. Mutation, misexpression, and altered mature miRNA processing are implicated in carcinogenesis and tumor progression. Common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in miRNAs may change their property through altering miRNA expression and/or maturation, and thus they may have an effect on thousands of target mRNAs, resulting in diverse functional consequences. In this work we used computational tools to predict the functional role of mRNAs targeted by miRNA in colon cancer genes. We have presented a method which allows the use of PupaSuite, UTRscan and miRBase as a pipeline for the prediction of miRNA and their target, and evaluated the functional role of mRNA in colon cancer.