Computational Identification of microRNA-17-3p in Breast Cancer Cells

Abstract

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, highly conserved non-coding RNA molecules involved in the RNA silencing and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. miRNAs are well conserved in both plants and animals, and are thought to be a vital and evolutionarily ancient component of gene regulation and also act as oncogenes or tumor suppressors. It is known that Express Sequence Tags (EST) are a short sub-sequence of cDNA sequence, which contain information of condition or tissue specific transcripts (coding and non-coding) of an organism.

Methods: In the present study, we have applied the bioinformatics tools to identify miRNA from breast cancer using EST resource. Through bioinformatics approach, the presence of an EST encoding hsa-miR-17- 3p of breast cancer was identified.

Results: Further studies reveal that hsa-miR-17 is confirmed in the breast cancer specific EST sequence among the predicted miRNAs secondary structure. Moreover, miR-17-3p could be responsible for a tumor suppression, which plays a major role in human breast cancer.

Conclusion: Further studies are required to investigate the molecular mechanisms behind miR-17-3p involves in the suppression of breast cancer cells. Interestingly, our target analysis suggesting that all the targets involved in multiple signaling pathways in different cell regulations moreover, we need to have more number of in vitro and in vivo studies that prove miR-17-3p as candidate microRNA for breast cancer cells.

Keywords: Bioinformatics; ESTs; breast cancer; miR-17-3p; microRNAs; targets.