A post-processing algorithm for miRNA microarray data. A post-processing algorithm for miRNA microarray data

One of the main disadvantages of using DNA microarrays for miRNA expression profiling is inability of adequate comparison of expression values across different miRNAs. This leads to a large amount of miRNAs with high scores which are actually not expressed in examined samples, i.e. false positives. We propose a post-processing algorithm which performs scoring of miRNAs in the results of microarray analysis based on expression values, time of discovery of miRNA represented by MIMAT accession number and correlation level between the expressions of miRNA and corresponding pre-miRNA in considered samples. The algorithm was successfully validated by the comparison of the results of its application to miRNA microarray breast tumor samples with publicly available miRNA-seq breast tumor data. Overall design: Results of microarray miRNA expression profiling should be post-processed in order to allow for inter-miRNA comparisons. In this work we propose a post- processing algorithm which assigns a score (number between 0 and 1) to each miRNA according to the degree of its reliability in analyzed samples.