Bioinformatics Challenges and Advances in RNA interference
RNA interference is a post-transcriptional gene regulatory mechanism to down-regulate the gene expression either by mRNA degradation or by mRNA translation inhibition. The mechanism involves a small partially complementary RNA against the target gene. To perform the action, it also requires a class of dedicated proteins to process these primary RNAs into mature microRNAs. The guide sequence determines the specificity of the miRNA. Therefore, the knowledge of guide sequence is crucial for predicting its targets and also exploiting the sequence to create a new regulatory circuit. In this short review, we will briefly discuss the role and challenges in miRNA research for unveiling the target prediction by bioinformatics and to foster our understanding and applications of RNA interference. Continue reading “Bioinformatics Challenges and Advances in RNA interference” »