A Computational Approach for Predicting Role of Human MicroRNAs in MERS-CoV Genome

Md Mahmudul Hasan; Rozina Akter; Md Shahin Ullah; Md Jaynul Abedin; G M Ahsan Ullah; Md Zakir Hossain

doi:10.1155/2014/967946

A Computational Approach for Predicting Role of Human MicroRNAs in MERS-CoV Genome

Adv Bioinformatics. 2014:2014:967946. doi: 10.1155/2014/967946. Epub 2014 Dec 23.

Authors

Md Mahmudul Hasan¹, Rozina Akter², Md Shahin Ullah³, Md Jaynul Abedin⁴, G M Ahsan Ullah⁵, Md Zakir Hossain²

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Biomedical Studies, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76706, USA.
² BioMedNanoTech, Inc., 500 South University Avenue Suite 319, Little Rock, AR 72205, USA.
³ Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna 9208, Bangladesh.
⁴ Civil Engineering Department, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh.
⁵ Environment Science Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna 9208, Bangladesh.

Abstract

The new epidemic Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is caused by a type of human coronavirus called MERS-CoV which has global fatality rate of about 30%. We are investigating potential antiviral therapeutics against MERS-CoV by using host microRNAs (miRNAs) which may downregulate viral gene expression to quell viral replication. We computationally predicted potential 13 cellular miRNAs from 11 potential hairpin sequences of MERS-CoV genome. Our study provided an interesting hypothesis that those miRNAs, that is, hsa-miR-628-5p, hsa-miR-6804-3p, hsa-miR-4289, hsa-miR-208a-3p, hsa-miR-510-3p, hsa-miR-18a-3p, hsa-miR-329-3p, hsa-miR-548ax, hsa-miR-3934-5p, hsa-miR-4474-5p, hsa-miR-7974, hsa-miR-6865-5p, and hsa-miR-342-3p, would be antiviral therapeutics against MERS-CoV infection.