A Catalog of Polymorphisms Falling in MicroRNA-Binding Regions of Cancer Genes

• DOI: 10.1089/dna.2007.0650
• Publication Date: 2007-10-17T14:40:36Z
• Authors: Debora Landi; Federica Gemignani; Roberto Barale; Stefano Landi
• Keywords: Falling (accident)

Recent evidence indicates that small, nonprotein-coding RNA molecules, called microRNAs (miRNAs), control cell growth, differentiation, and apoptosis, are also involved in tumorigenesis. miRNAs can bind to the 3′ untranslated regions (3′UTRs) of messenger RNAs interfere with their translation. We hypothesized common polymorphisms within genes or targets could have an important impact for individual's risk develop complex diseases. In this study, we selected 3′UTRs 129 pathways commonly acknowledged as cancer, identified putative miRNA-binding sites by means specialized algorithms (PicTar, DIANA-MicroT, miRBase, miRanda, TargetScan, MicroInspector). Then investigated 79 single-nucleotide (SNPs) binding ability affect impair miRNA assessing ΔΔG, variation ΔG (Gibbs free energy), through comparing wild-type corresponding variant alleles. Moreover, reported seven SNPs pre-miRNA hairpin one SNP mature sequence miR-608. Considering validation status frequencies, found at least 23 candidate biological relevance propose further investigation case-control association studies.