MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate diverse biological processes by repressing mRNAs, but their modest effects on direct targets, together with their participation in larger regulatory networks, make it challenging to delineate miRNA-mediated effects.
Researchers describe an approach to characterizing miRNA-regulatory networks by systematically profiling transcriptional, post-transcriptional and epigenetic activity in a pair of isogenic murine fibroblast cell lines with and without Dicer expression.
By RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and CLIP (crosslinking followed by immunoprecipitation) sequencing (CLIP-seq), they found that most of the changes induced by global miRNA loss occur at the level of transcription.
Authors then introduced a network modeling approach that integrated these data with epigenetic data to identify specific miRNA-regulated transcription factors that explain the impact of miRNA perturbation on gene expression.
In total, authors demonstrate that combining multiple genome-wide datasets spanning diverse regulatory modes enables accurate delineation of the downstream miRNA-regulated transcriptional network and establishes a model for studying similar networks in other systems.
http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247(15)01455-2
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