A multi-organism database of cooperating microRNAs and their mutual targets.
The triplexRNA contains predicted RNA triplexes composed of two cooperatively acting microRNAs (miRNAs) and their mutual target mRNA.
MiRNA cooperativity has been experimentally characterised by Sætrom et al. (2007) as a strong regulatory pattern, whose formation inhibits the transcription of a target gene. The phenomenon is explained in detail by Schmitz et al. (2014), and illustrated below. Here, a target mRNA can be repressed by either a single miRNA (right), or by a pair of cooperating miRNAs (left). While in the first case miRNA and target form a duplex structure, the second case leads to the formation of a RNA triplex.
Even if the expression of the cooperating miRNAs is only mildly up-regulated, an enhanced repressive effect can be observed as compared to the cases where single miRNAs are highly up-regulated.
The TriplexRNA contains predicted RNA triplexes for Human and Mouse. Each triplex is characterized by
- Statistics (Gibbs free energy, energy gain, seed distance, length)
- Dot-bracket notation assembly
- Graphical illustration of its simulated econdary structure
- Graphical illustration of its predicted equilibrium concentration
Since the presence of miRNAs can be correlated with the progression of known diseases, the TriplexRNA provides an interface for the navigation of known metabolic KEGG pathways, within the framework of cooperative miRNA targets.
This feature allows researchers to identify and test disease-specific miRNAs that could be used as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers.
The metabolic pathway function is illustrated below. Here, mutual targets of the selected miRNA pair hsa-miR-374a and hsa-miR-590-3p within the KEGG disease pathway Asthma are highlighted in yellow.
