title: miRNA and mRNA expression analysis reveals potential sex-biased miRNA expression.
abstract: Recent studies suggest that mRNAs may be differentially expressed between males and females. This study aimed to perform expression analysis of mRNA and its main regulatory molecule, microRNA (miRNA), to discuss the potential sex-specific expression patterns using abnormal expression profiles from The Cancer Genome Atlas database. Generally, deregulated miRNAs and mRNAs had consistent expression between males and females, but some miRNAs may be oppositely expressed in specific diseases: up-regulated in one group and down-regulated in another. Studies of miRNA gene families and clusters further confirmed that these sequence or location related miRNAs might have opposing expression between sexes. The specific miRNA might have greater expression divergence across different groups, suggesting flexible expression across different individuals, especially in tumor samples. The typical analysis regardless of the sex will ignore or balance these sex-specific deregulated miRNAs. Compared with flexible miRNAs, their targets of mRNAs showed relative stable expression between males and females. These relevant results provide new insights into miRNA-mRNA interaction and sex difference.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioinformatics, School of Geographic and Biologic Information, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, 210023, China.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 211166, China.
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 211166, China.
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioinformatics, School of Geographic and Biologic Information, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, 210023, China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Molecular and Medical Biotechnology, College of Life Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China.
authors.forename: Tingming
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Liang
mesh_terms: D015982:Bias; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D012737:Sex Factors; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs; D012333:RNA, Messenger