MicroRNA Interaction Networks

Bertolazzi’s thesis focuses on developing and applying computational methods to predict microRNA binding sites located on messenger RNA molecules. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression by binding target messenger RNA molecules (mRNAs). Therefore, the prediction of miRNA binding is important to investigate cellular processes. Moreover, alterations in miRNA activity have been associated with many human diseases, such as cancer. The thesis explores miRNA binding behavior and highlights fundamental information for miRNA target prediction. In particular, a machine learning approach is used to upgrade an existing target prediction algorithm named ComiR; the original version of ComiR considers miRNA binding sites located on mRNA 3’UTR region. The novel algorithm significantly improves the ComiR prediction capacity by including miRNA binding sites located on mRNA coding regions.

La tesi di Giorgio Bertolazzi è incentrata sullo sviluppo di nuovi algoritmi per la predizione dei legami miRNA-mRNA. In particolare, un algoritmo di machine-learning viene proposto per l'upgrade del web tool ComiR; la versione originale di ComiR considerava soltanto i siti di legame dei miRNA collocati nella regione 3'UTR dell'RNA messaggero. La nuova versione di ComiR include nella ricerca dei legami la regione codificante dell'RNA messaggero.