TY - JOUR
T1 - Mining cancer gene expression databases for latent information on intronic microRNAs
AU - Monterisi, Simona
AU - D'Ario, Giovanni
AU - Dama, Elisa
AU - Rotmensz, Nicole
AU - Confalonieri, Stefano
AU - Tordonato, Chiara
AU - Troglio, Flavia
AU - Bertalot, Giovanni
AU - Maisonneuve, Patrick
AU - Viale, Giuseppe
AU - Nicassio, Francesco
AU - Vecchi, Manuela
AU - Di Fiore, Pier Paolo
AU - Bianchi, Fabrizio
PY - 2015/2/1
Y1 - 2015/2/1
N2 - Around 50% of all human microRNAs reside within introns of coding genes and are usually co-transcribed. Gene expression datasets, therefore, should contain a wealth of miRNA-relevant latent information, exploitable for many basic and translational research aims. The present study was undertaken to investigate this possibility. We developed an in silico approach to identify intronic-miRNAs relevant to breast cancer, using public gene expression datasets. This led to the identification of a miRNA signature for aggressive breast cancer, and to the characterization of novel roles of selected miRNAs in cancer-related biological phenotypes. Unexpectedly, in a number of cases, expression regulation of the intronic-miRNA was more relevant than the expression of their host gene. These results provide a proof of principle for the validity of our intronic miRNA mining strategy, which we envision can be applied not only to cancer research, but also to other biological and biomedical fields.
AB - Around 50% of all human microRNAs reside within introns of coding genes and are usually co-transcribed. Gene expression datasets, therefore, should contain a wealth of miRNA-relevant latent information, exploitable for many basic and translational research aims. The present study was undertaken to investigate this possibility. We developed an in silico approach to identify intronic-miRNAs relevant to breast cancer, using public gene expression datasets. This led to the identification of a miRNA signature for aggressive breast cancer, and to the characterization of novel roles of selected miRNAs in cancer-related biological phenotypes. Unexpectedly, in a number of cases, expression regulation of the intronic-miRNA was more relevant than the expression of their host gene. These results provide a proof of principle for the validity of our intronic miRNA mining strategy, which we envision can be applied not only to cancer research, but also to other biological and biomedical fields.
KW - Breast cancer
KW - Cancer
KW - Gene expression
KW - MicroRNA
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84921290272&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84921290272&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.molonc.2014.10.001
DO - 10.1016/j.molonc.2014.10.001
M3 - Article
C2 - 25459350
AN - SCOPUS:84921290272
VL - 9
SP - 473
EP - 487
JO - Molecular Oncology
JF - Molecular Oncology
SN - 1574-7891
IS - 2
ER -