miRnalyze: an interactive database linking tool to unlock intuitive microRNA regulation of cell signaling pathways

The various pathophysiological processes occurring in living systems are known to be orchestrated by delicate interplays and cross- talks between different genes and their regulators. Among the various regulators of genes, there is a class of small non- coding RNA molecules known as microRNAs. Although, the relative simplicity of miRNAs and their ability to modulate cellular processes make them attractive therapeutic candidates, their presence in large numbers make it challenging for experimental researchers to interpret the intricacies of the molecular processes they regulate. Most of the existing bioinformatic tools fail to address these challenges. Here, we present a new web resource 'miRnalyze' that has been specifically designed to directly identify the putative regulation of cell signaling pathways by miRNAs. The tool integrates miRNA- target predictions with signaling cascade members by utilizing TargetScanHuman 7.1 miRNA- target prediction tool and the KEGG pathway database, and thus provides researchers with in- depth insights into modulation of signal transduction pathways by miRNAs. miRnalyze is capable of identifying common miRNAs targeting more than one gene in the same signaling pathway- a feature that further increases the probability of modulating the pathway and downstream reactions when using miRNA modulators. Additionally, miRnalyze can sort miRNAs according to the seed- match types and TargetScan Context++score, thus providing a hierarchical list of most valuable miRNAs. Furthermore, in order to provide users with comprehensive information regarding miRNAs, genes and pathways, miRnalyze also links to expression data of miRNAs (miRmine) and genes (TiGER) and proteome abundance (PaxDb) data. To validate the capability of the tool, we have documented the correlation of miRnalyze's prediction with experimental confirmation studies.