Comparing two approaches of miR-34a target identification, biotinylated-miRNA pulldown vs miRNA overexpression

Here we show that biotin-labelled miR-34a can be loaded to AGO2, and AGO2 immunoprecipitation can pulldown biotinylated miR-34a (Bio-miR pulldown). RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) of the Bio-miR pulldown RNAs efficiently identified miR-34a mRNA targets, which could be verified with luciferase assays. In contrast to the approach of Bio-miR pulldown, RNA-seq of miR-34a overexpression samples had limited value in identifying direct targets of miR-34a. It seems that pulldown of 30 -Biotin-tagged miRNA can identify bona fide microRNA targets at least for miR34a. Overall design: biotin-labelled miR-34a pulldown and RNA sequencing of miR-34a overexpression samples