Identification of miRNAs and their potential effects on multiple sclerosis related pathways using in silico analysis.

BACKGROUND: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally via mRNA degradation. As a result, they have an impact on a variety of pathways in organisms that are important for both health and disease. miRNAs can be used as potential diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic biomarkers for immune and nervous system-related diseases such as MS. METHOD: Differentially expressed miRNAs from peripheral blood samples of patient and control groups were selected from NCBI GEO Datasets using GEO2R. Common miRNAs and their related pathways were analyzed using miRNet, miRWalk, DIANA mirpath, KEGG pathway. Target genes and their protein-protein interactions were also evaluated using STRING and GeneMANIA. RESULTS: We found 12 common miRNAs, four of which were determined to be more important in MS-related pathways such as the immune and neural signaling networks. These include pathways neurotrophin, JAK-STAT, B cell receptor, ErbB, MAPK, Fc gamma R-mediated phagocytosis, Chemokine and T cell receptor signaling pathways. Moreover, target gene analyses were performed and MAPK1, PIK3CD, PIK3R1, PIK3R2, PIK3R3, PIK3R5, AKT2, SOS2, RAF1 genes were found. Further analysis showed that the identified genes and related pathways have interactions at multiple points, and that the overlapping points are commonly found in the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway. CONCLUSION: In this paper, MS-related miRNAs and their potential effects on related pathways were evaluated. This study can be used for understanding MS pathogenesis and provides new tools for the discovery of new therapies.

Generation and Analysis of Expressed Sequence Tags from Olea europaea L.

Olive (Olea europaea L.) is an important source of edible oil which was originated in Near-East region. In this study, two cDNA libraries were constructed from young olive leaves and immature olive fruits for generation of ESTs to discover the novel genes and search the function of unknown genes of olive. The randomly selected 3840 colonies were sequenced for EST collection from both libraries. Readable 2228 sequences for olive leaf and 1506 sequences for olive fruit were assembled into 205 and 69 contigs, respectively, whereas 2478 were singletons. Putative functions of all 2752 differentially expressed unique sequences were designated by gene homology based on BLAST and annotated using BLAST2GO. While 1339 ESTs show no homology to the database, 2024 ESTs have homology (under 80%) with hypothetical proteins, putative proteins, expressed proteins, and unknown proteins in NCBI-GenBank. 635 EST's unique genes sequence have been identified by over 80% homology to known function in other species which were not previously described in Olea family. Only 3.1% of total EST's was shown similarity with olive database existing in NCBI. This generated EST's data and consensus sequences were submitted to NCBI as valuable source for functional genome studies of olive.