In-Silico Methods to Identify Common MicroRNAs and Pathways of Neuromuscular Diseases

Abstract

Neuromuscular disorders (NMD) are a heterogeneous group of diseases characterized by the loss of function of the peripheral nerves and muscles. However, there are no effective and widespread therapeutic approaches to prevent or delay the progression of these disease types. microRNAs (miRNAs) which cause significant changes in gene expression by binding to target messenger RNAs (mRNAs), are known to have an effect on disease mechanisms. In this study, by integrating different bioinformatics methods, we aim to find miRNAs, target genes and pathways related to a group of neuromuscular diseases. For this purpose, we determined 17 miRNAs that show significant expression changes between patient and healthy groups; predicted target genes of these miRNAs; and identified affected pathways using subnetwork discovery, functional enrichment based algorithms. In our study, we integrated different in-silico approaches that proceed in top-down manner or bottom-up manner. The identified candidate miRNAs, genes and pathways, which could help to explain neuromuscular disease development mechanisms, are now under investigation in wet-lab.