MicroRNAs mediate liver transcriptome changes upon soy diet intervention in mice

Soy-based diets have triggered the interest of the research community due to their beneficial effects on a wide variety of pathologies like breast and prostate cancer, diabetes, and atherosclerosis. However, the molecular details underlying these effects are far from being completely understood and several recent attempts have been made to elucidate the soy-induced liver transcriptome changes in different animal models. Here we used Next Generation Sequencing to identify a set of two microRNAs specifically modulated by short-term soy-enriched diet in young male mice and estimate their impact on the liver transcriptome assessed by microarray. Clustering and topological community detection (CTCD) network analysis of STRING generated interactions of transcriptome data led to the identification of five topological communities of genes characteristically altered and putatively targeted by microRNAs upon soy diet intervention. One-color microarray study was performed to measure gene expression changes in the liver of mice fed for 4 weeks a soy-enriched diet compared to controls (the liver of mice fed for 4 weeks a regular food). Each group consisted of three biological replicates (mice).