title: Involvement of microRNA families in cancer.
abstract: Collecting representative sets of cancer microRNAs (miRs) from the literature we show that their corresponding families are enriched in sets of highly interacting miR families. Targeting cancer genes on a statistically significant level, such cancer miR families strongly intervene with signaling pathways that harbor numerous cancer genes. Clustering miR family-specific profiles of pathway intervention, we found that different miR families share similar interaction patterns. Resembling corresponding patterns of cancer miRs families, such interaction patterns may indicate a miR family's potential role in cancer. As we find that the number of targeted cancer genes is a naïve proxy for a cancer miR family, we design a simple method to predict candidate miR families based on gene-specific interaction profiles. Assessing the impact of miR families to distinguish between (non-)cancer genes, we predict a set of 84 potential candidate families, including 75% of initially collected cancer miR families. Further confirming their relevance, predicted cancer miR families are significantly indicated in increasing, non-random numbers of tumor types.
authors: National Center of Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA. wuchtys@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
authors: Stefan
authors: S
authors: Wuchty
authors: Dolores
authors: D
authors: Arjona
authors: Serdar
authors: S
authors: Bozdag
authors: Peter O
authors: PO
authors: Bauer
mesh_terms: D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D052138:Genes, Neoplasm; D006801:Humans; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000145:classification / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000502:physiology; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D025941:Protein Interaction Mapping; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000378:metabolism; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs; D012333:RNA, Messenger