همایش ملی بیوانفورماتیک ایران

صفحه اصلی / 4th international edition and 13th Iranian Conference on Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics Analysis of Prostate Cancer by the Construction of circRNA-miRNA-mRNA Regulatory Network

نویسندگان :

Fatemeh Zamani¹ Ali Taravati²

1- دانشگاه شهید مدنی آذربایجان 2- دانشگاه مازندران

کلمات کلیدی :

Prostate cancer،Circular RNA،Biomarkers،Regulatory network

چکیده :

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer by incidence in men in 112 countries (as of 2020), and accounts for one in every 14 cancers diagnosed globally, and 15% of all male cancers (Sung and Ferlay,2020). Among men, the disease ranks second only to lung cancer in terms of cancer mortality (Bray and Colombet, 2023). CircRNAs are proven essential elements in the initiation and progression of human disease, especially cancers, and recent studies indicated that they function as potential biomarkers for cancer diagnosis and treatment (Wilusz and Sharp, 2013). In depth study revealed that some circRNAs might regulate microRNA (miRNA) function as microRNA sponges the and circRNA-miRNA-mRNA axis axes may play a crucial role in cancer-related or non-cancer pathways (Li and Pei, 2020). To conduct this study, circRNA expression data were retrieved from the GEO database. Differentially expressed circRNAs (DECs) were identified using the Limma package in the R programming environment. Subsequently, miRNAs associated with these circRNAs were predicted using a specialized database focused on cancer-related circRNAs. In the next step, target genes of the identified miRNAs were predicted using the miRWalk web tool. To identify key genes, the overlap between these predicted target genes and differentially expressed genes obtained from the TCGA database was analyzed. Functional enrichment analyses were performed to explore the biological pathways associated with these genes. A protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed using Cytoscape software to investigate molecular interactions. Hub genes were identified within this network. Finally, a regulatory network comprising circRNA/miRNA/mRNA interactions was developed and analyzed. In a regulatory genetic study, 32 circRNAs were found to be unregulated, accompanied by the downregulation of 20 miRNAs and the upregulation of 245 genes. These findings suggest a potential role for circRNAs in influencing gene expression by modulating miRNA activity. Studies show that circRNAs influence the expression of key genes by regulating the circRNA-miRNA-mRNA axis, thereby activating pathways related to cell division and chromosomal segregation. These processes play a crucial role in the proliferation of cancer cells and provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying prostate cancer progression.