Abstract MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small noncoding RNAs that act as efficient post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression. In 2012, the first cross-kingdom miRNA-based interaction had been evidenced, demonstrating that exogenous miRNAs act in a manner of mammalian functional miRNAs. Starting from this evidence, we defined the concept of cross-kingdom functional homology between plant and mammalian miRNAs as a needful requirement for vegetal miRNA to explicit a regulation mechanism into the host mammalian cell, comparable to the endogenous one. Then, we proposed a new dedicated algorithm to compare plant and mammalian miRNAs, searching for functional sequence homologies between them, and we developed a web software called MirCompare. We also predicted human genes regulated by the selected plant miRNAs, and we determined the role of exogenous miRNAs in the perturbation of intracellular interaction networks. Finally, as already performed by Pirro and coworkers, the ability of MirCompare to sel...
['S. Pirro', 'Antonella Minutolo', 'Andrea Galgani', 'Marina Potestà', 'Vittorio Colizzi', 'Carla Montesano']
Bioinformatics Prediction and Experimental Validation of MicroRNAs Involved in Cross-Kingdom Interaction