In 2012, microRNA (miRNA)–promoter interaction resource (microPIR) was introduced as a comprehensive public database containing over 15 million predicted miRNA target sites located within human promoter sequences. The database assists experimental scientists in exploring interactions of interest and facilitate research in this area. Since the release, access to the predicted targets on the database has markedly increased, demonstrating the potentially increasing interest in the research of this topic and the potential value of the microPIR database in the future.
Given the conservation of miRNAs and associated gene regulatory mechanisms across species, it is plausible that the regulatory role of miRNA through promoter recognition is also present among mammalian species. Researchers therefore made and update to the database and named it microPIR2 which contains predicted miRNA promoter targets in mouse genome. microPIR2 provides approximately 80 million human and 40 million mouse predicted target sites. In addition to being a reference database, microPIR2 is a tool for comparative analysis of target sites on the promoters of human–mouse orthologous genes. In particular, this new feature was designed to identify potential miRNA–promoter interactions conserved between species that could be stronger candidates for further experimental validation. Additional supporting information such as nuclear and cytoplasmic localization of miRNAs and miRNA–disease association is also incorporated into this new database.
The search result of gene query showed human-mouse gene information and summarized numbers of miRNA target sites.
The comparative view of human-mouse miRNA promoter target sites
microPIR2 was developed by Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Laboratory. The database is available on this website: http://www4a.biotec.or.th/micropir2
Ref: Piriyapongsa,J., Bootchai, C., Ngamphiw, C. and Tongsima, S. (2014). microPIR2: a comprehensive database for human–mouse comparative study of microRNA–promoter interactions.Database, Vol. 2014: article ID bau115; doi:10.1093/database/bau115
