Integrated analysis of concurrent microRNA and gene expression
in the context of protein interactions
Igor Ulitsky, TAU
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are believed to play a major role in gene regulatory
networks, influencing diverse biological phenomena. Recent studies
estimate that up to one third of all human genes are targeted by miRNAs,
and that coordinated binding of miRNAs is frequently required for their
repressive activity. A key step towards the challenge of understanding
regulatory mechanisms of miRNAs in complex cellular systems is to
identify functionally coherent modules of cooperating miRNAs and their
targets. Inclusion of information on protein interactions and
transcript levels may prove helpful in this context. We developed a
novel computational method for integrated detection of modules of
miRNAs, their mRNA targets, and genes consistently anticorrelated with
the miRNA levels, forming coherent protein-interaction subnetworks.
I will descibe our analysis of a dataset of genome-wide human mRNA and
miRNA profiles, designed to identify regulatory pathways critical for
self-renewal, pluripotency, and differentiation of human stem cells.
Joint work with Louise Laurent, Franz-Josef Mueller, Jeanne F. Loring
and Ron Shamir.