Integrated miRNA-mRNA analysis revealing the potential roles of miRNAs in chordomas

Emerging evidence suggests that microRNAs (miRNAs) are crucially involved in tumorigenesis and that paired expression profiles of miRNAs and mRNAs can be used to identify functional miRNA-target relationships with high precision.However, no studies have applied integrated analysis to miRNA and mRNA profiles in chordomas. The purpose of this study was to provide insights into the pathogenesis of chordomas by using this integrated analysis method Differentially expressed miRNAs and mRNAs of chordomas (n = 3) and notochord tissues (n = 3) were analyzed by using microarrays with hierarchical clustering analysis. Subsequently, the target genes of the differentially expressed miRNAs were predicted and overlapped with the differentially expressed mRNAs. Then, GO and pathway analyses were performed for the intersecting genes

越来越多的研究证据表明，微小RNA（microRNAs，miRNAs）在肿瘤发生过程中发挥关键调控作用，且miRNA与信使RNA（messenger RNAs，mRNAs）的配对表达谱可用于高精度鉴定具有功能相关性的miRNA-靶基因调控关系。然而，目前尚无研究针对脊索瘤（chordomas）的miRNA与mRNA表达谱开展整合分析。本研究旨在通过该整合分析方法，为阐明脊索瘤的发病机制提供新的见解。本研究采用微阵列芯片技术，对3例脊索瘤组织与3例脊索组织样本中差异表达的miRNA和mRNA进行分析，并结合层级聚类分析处理数据。随后，对差异表达miRNA的靶基因进行预测，并将预测得到的靶基因与差异表达mRNA取交集。最后，针对上述交集基因开展基因本体（Gene Ontology，GO）功能富集分析与通路富集分析。