miR-1207-5p Can Contribute to Dysregulation of Inflammatory Response in COVID-19 via Targeting SARS-CoV-2 RNA

The present study focuses on the role of human miRNAs in SARS-CoV-2 infection. An extensive analysis of human miRNA binding sites on the viral genome led to the identification of miR-1207-5p as potential regulator of the viral Spike protein. It is known that exogenous RNA can compete for miRNA targets of endogenous mRNAs leading to their overexpression. Our results suggest that SARS-CoV-2 virus can act as an exogenous competing RNA, facilitating the over-expression of its endogenous targets. Transcriptomic analysis of human alveolar and bronchial epithelial cells confirmed that the CSF1 gene, a known target of miR-1207-5p, is over-expressed following SARS-CoV-2 infection. CSF1 enhances macr…

Additional file 4: of RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets

Overview of gene expression levels in IP and FT samples. Focus on the enriched genes in AGO2-IP and GW182-IP vs FT samples. The reported expression levels are computed as the average values of the three performed experimental replicates. (PDF 1423 kb)

On the prospect of serum exosomal miRNA profiling and protein biomarkers for the diagnosis of ascending aortic dilatation in patients with bicuspid and tricuspid aortic valve.

Background: To determine the impact of circulating miRNA and protein activity on the severity of ascending aortic dilatation in patients with bicuspid (BAV) and tricuspid aortic valve (TAV). Methods: By reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, exosomal circulating expression levels (versus healthy aorta) of miRNAs and absolute levels of transforming growth factor β (TGF-β), matrix metalloproteinases (MMP-2, -3 and -9), tissue inhibitors (TIMP-1, -2, -3 and -4), and soluble receptors for advanced glycation end products AGEs (sRAGE) were evaluated in ascending dilated aortas of 71 patients with different valve morphotype. Results: Less-dilated ascending aorta exhibited a specific miRN…

Networks in biological systems: An investigation of the Gene Ontology as an evolving network

Many biological systems can be described as networks where diFFerent elements interact, in order to perform biological processes. We introduce a network associated with the Gene Ontology. Specifically, we construct a correlation-based network where the vertices are the terms of the Gene Ontology and the link between each two terms is weighted on the basis of the number of genes that they have in common. We analyze a filtered network obtained from the correlation-based network and we characterize its evolution over different releases of the Gene Ontology.

Radiomics: A New Biomedical Workflow to Create a Predictive Model

‘Radiomics’ is utilized to improve the prediction of patient overall survival and/or outcome. Target segmentation, feature extraction, feature selection, and classification model are the fundamental blocks of a radiomics workflow. Nevertheless, these blocks can be affected by several issues, i.e. high inter- and intra-observer variability. To overcome these issues obtaining reproducible results, we propose a novel radiomics workflow to identify a relevant prognostic model concerning a real clinical problem. In the specific, we propose an operator-independent segmentation system with the consequent automatic extraction of radiomics features, and a novel feature selection approach to create a…

A multivariate statistical test for differential expression analysis

AbstractStatistical tests of differential expression usually suffer from two problems. Firstly, their statistical power is often limited when applied to small and skewed data sets. Secondly, gene expression data are usually discretized by applying arbitrary criteria to limit the number of false positives. In this work, a new statistical test obtained from a convolution of multivariate hypergeometric distributions, the Hy-test, is proposed to address these issues. Hy-test has been carried out on transcriptomic data from breast and kidney cancer tissues, and it has been compared with other differential expression analysis methods. Hy-test allows implicit discretization of the expression profi…

Transcriptomic Changes Following Partial Depletion of CENP-E in Normal Human Fibroblasts

The centromere is a fundamental chromosome structure in which the macro-molecular kinetochore assembles and is bound by spindle microtubules, allowing the segregation of sister chromatids during mitosis. Any alterations in kinetochore assembly or functioning or kinetochore–microtubule attachments jeopardize chromosome stability, leading to aneuploidy, a common feature of cancer cells. The spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) supervises this process, ensuring a faithful segregation of chromosomes. CENP-E is both a protein of the kinetochore and a crucial component of the SAC required for kinetochore–microtubule capture and stable attachment, as well as congression of chromosomes to the metaphas…

Dall’analisi del genoma al vocabolario biologico dell’autismo

Additional file 6: of RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets

Wilcoxon test p-values summary. Wilcoxon test p-values (log10) obtained by comparing the variable values associated with the enriched/underrepresented genes sets. Three different miRNA target prediction tools (Targetscan, PITA and miRanda) were used to compute the necessary binding sites (BS) matrices. The BS matrices used to compute the p-values in the last panel were obtained by considering BS predicted by at least two of the three prediction tools. In each panel, the variables computed with the three AGO2 IN profiles were used to distinguish enriched and underrepresented genes in AGO2-IP vs FT and the variables computed with the three GW182 IN profiles were used to distinguish enriched a…

Detecting significant features in modeling microRNA-target interactions

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA molecules mediating the translational repression and degradation of target mRNAs in the cell. Mature miRNAs are used as a template by the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) to recognize the complementary mRNAs to be regulated. Up to 60% of human genes are putative targets of one or more miRNAs. Several prediction tools are available to suggest putative miRNA targets, however, only a small part of the interaction pairs has been validated by experimental approaches. The analysis of the expression profile of the RNA fraction immunoprecipitated (IP) with the RISC proteins is an established method to detect which genes are actually regulated by the R…

Additional file 7: of RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets

Summary of miRNA expression profiles shuffling effects. ROC analysis was performed to evaluate the performance of F6 and F4d variables, computed with simulated miRNA profiles, in distinguishing enriched/underrepresented genes in AGO2 or GW182-IP samples. Each panel reports the AUC values obtained with simulated variables. Each boxplot refers to AUC values obtained with a specific set of simulations, where the expression profile of a set of miRNAs was shuffled. The boxplot in the center was obtained by shuffling all miRNAs. The boxplots from the center to the right refer to simulations where all the miRNAs were shuffled with the exception of n top expressed miRNAs, n increasing in the right …

The Challenge of Using CB-HSCs As Source for Gene Therapy: Lentiviral Vector Transduction, Phenotypic Characterization and Global Gene Expression Profile of Ex-Vivo Expanded CB CD34+ Cells

Abstract Introduction: Genetic modification of autologous hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC) is a promising clinical intervention to cure inherited monogenic diseases. Successful gene therapy trials have already been conducted using CD34+ cells from bone marrow and from mobilized peripheral blood. In this regard, cord blood (CB) represents an attractive source of HSCs due to its high concentration of high proliferative HSPC and increased susceptibility to be transduced by lentiviral vectors. Unfortunately, the major disadvantage is the limited number of HSC in the CB collection. Consequently, ex-vivo expansion of CB-HSC is desirable to extend clinical applications. Purposes: To …

An extended catalogue of ncRNAs in Streptomyces coelicolor reporting abundant tmRNA, RNase-P RNA and RNA fragments derived from pre-ribosomal RNA leader sequences

Streptomyces coelicolor is a model organism for studying streptomycetes. This genus possesses relevant medical and economical roles, because it produces many biologically active metabolites of pharmaceutical interest, including the majority of commercialized antibiotics. In this bioinformatic study, the transcriptome of S. coelicolor has been analyzed to identify novel RNA species and quantify the expression of both annotated and novel transcripts in solid and liquid growth medium cultures at different times. The major characteristics disclosed in this study are: (i) the diffuse antisense transcription; (ii) the great abundance of transfer-messenger RNAs (tmRNA); (iii) the abundance of rnpB…

Usefulness of regional right ventricular and right atrial strain for prediction of early and late right ventricular failure following a left ventricular assist device implant: A machine learning approach

Background: Identifying candidates for left ventricular assist device surgery at risk of right ventricular failure remains difficult. The aim was to identify the most accurate predictors of right ventricular failure among clinical, biological, and imaging markers, assessed by agreement of different supervised machine learning algorithms. Methods: Seventy-four patients, referred to HeartWare left ventricular assist device since 2010 in two Italian centers, were recruited. Biomarkers, right ventricular standard, and strain echocardiography, as well as cath-lab measures, were compared among patients who did not develop right ventricular failure (N = 56), those with acute–right ventricular fail…

RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets.

Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA molecules mediating the translational repression and degradation of target mRNAs in the cell. Mature miRNAs are used as a template by the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) to recognize the complementary mRNAs to be regulated. To discern further RISC functions, we analyzed the activities of two RISC proteins, AGO2 and GW182, in the MCF-7 human breast cancer cell line. Methods We performed three RIP-Chip experiments using either anti-AGO2 or anti-GW182 antibodies and compiled a data set made up of the miRNA and mRNA expression profiles of three samples for each experiment. Specifically, we analyzed the input sample, the immunoprecipita…

Additional file 5: of RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets

Venn diagram of lists of enriched genes. The considered lists are: AGO2-IP (UP_AGO2 set), the list of enriched genes detected by Fan et al. [13] (UP_AGO2_Fan) and our list of enriched genes in GW182-IP sample (UP_GW182). The reported p-values refer to the closest intersection set of genes and are computed with one tail Fisher-test. (PDF 34 kb)

Economic Sector Identification in a Set of Stocks Traded at the New York Stock Exchange: A Comparative Analysis

We review some methods recently used in the literature to detect the existence of a certain degree of common behavior of stock returns belonging to the same economic sector. Specifically, we discuss methods based on random matrix theory and hierarchical clustering techniques. We apply these methods to a set of stocks traded at the New York Stock Exchange. The investigated time series are recorded at a daily time horizon. All the considered methods are able to detect economic information and the presence of clusters characterized by the economic sector of stocks. However, different methodologies provide different information about the considered set. Our comparative analysis suggests that th…

Spanning Trees and bootstrap reliability estimation in correlation based networks

We introduce a new technique to associate a spanning tree to the average linkage cluster analysis. We term this tree as the Average Linkage Minimum Spanning Tree. We also introduce a technique to associate a value of reliability to links of correlation based graphs by using bootstrap replicas of data. Both techniques are applied to the portfolio of the 300 most capitalized stocks traded at New York Stock Exchange during the time period 2001-2003. We show that the Average Linkage Minimum Spanning Tree recognizes economic sectors and sub-sectors as communities in the network slightly better than the Minimum Spanning Tree does. We also show that the average reliability of links in the Minimum …

Additional file 1: of RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets

Analysis of miRNA expression in AGO2 and GW182-IP samples. a) miRNA expression level in AGO2-IP samples (average value from the three performed experiments) vs the expression level in IN samples (average value from the three performed experiments). The Pearson correlation values reported on the top of the picture were computed by using all the expressed miRNA, and the top 100 or 50 expressed miRNAs. The colored points refer to miRNA that have been validated by RT-PCR data. Green points refer to hsa-miR-141-3p, hsa-miR-21-5p, hsa-let-7f-5p, hsa-miR-16-5p, hsa-miR-24-3p, hsa-miR-27a-3p, hsa-miR-23a-3p. The red point refers to hsa-miR-1260a. b) Comparison of IP/IN ratios obtained by RT-PCR dat…

Gene-based and semantic structure of the Gene Ontology as a complex network

The last decade has seen the advent and consolidation of ontology based tools for the identification and biological interpretation of classes of genes, such as the Gene Ontology. The information accumulated time-by-time and included in the GO is encoded in the definition of terms and in the setting up of semantic relations amongst terms. This approach might be usefully complemented by a bottom-up approach based on the knowledge of relationships amongst genes. To this end, we investigate the Gene Ontology from a complex network perspective. We consider the semantic network of terms naturally associated with the semantic relationships provided by the Gene Ontology consortium and a gene-based …

Additional file 8: of RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets

Empirical Cumulative Distribution Function of 3â UTR and coding region length of IP-Enriched genes. Enriched genes in AGO (1â 4) and in GW182 protein family IP selected by considering log2 IP-Enrichment of transcript greater than 1. Data are downloaded from Landthaler et al. [14]. The Empirical Cumulative Distribution Function of the 3â UTR length (top) and coding region length (bottom) of genes enriched exclusively by AGO-IP (red line), GW182-IP (blue line) and both IPs (black line) are reported. The reported p-value is computed by performing a Wilcoxon test to compare the length distributions of genes enriched exclusively in AGO-IP and in GW182-IP. (PDF 145 kb)

An improvement of ComiR algorithm for microRNA target prediction by exploiting coding region sequences of mRNAs

AbstractMicroRNA are small non-coding RNAs that post-transcriptionally regulate the expression levels of messenger RNAs. MicroRNA regulation activity depends on the recognition of binding sites located on mRNA molecules. ComiR is a web tool realized to predict the targets of a set of microRNAs, starting from their expression profile. ComiR was trained with the information regarding binding sites in the 3’utr region, by using a reliable dataset containing the targets of endogenously expressed microRNA in D. melanogaster S2 cells. This dataset was obtained by comparing the results from two different experimental approaches, i.e., inhibition, and immunoprecipitation of the AGO1 protein--a comp…

Additional file 9: of RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets

Summary of miRNA expression profiles switch between experiment replicas. ROC analysis of F6&F4d SVM model trained with variables calculated with miRNA expression profiles from each of the three anti-AGO2 RIP experiments. SVM models were used to classify the top 1000 and the bottom 1000 genes with respect to the IP/FT mRNA expression ratio, computed for each of the three AGO2 RIP experiments. (PDF 653 kb)

Aneuploid IMR90 cells induced by depletion of pRB, DNMT1 and MAD2 show a common gene expression signature

Chromosome segregation defects lead to aneuploidy which is a major feature of solid tumors. How diploid cells face chromosome mis-segregation and how aneuploidy is tolerated in tumor cells are not completely defined yet. Thus, an important goal of cancer genetics is to identify gene networks that underlie aneuploidy and are involved in its tolerance. To this aim, we induced aneuploidy in IMR90 human primary cells by depleting pRB, DNMT1 and MAD2 and analyzed their gene expression profiles by microarray analysis. Bioinformatic analysis revealed a common gene expression profile of IMR90 cells that became aneuploid. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) also revealed gene-sets/pathways that are …

Time evolution of the microwave second-order response of YBaCuO powder

Transient effects in the microwave second-order response of YBaCuO powder are investigated. The time evolution of the second harmonic signal has been measured for about 300 s after the sample had been exposed to variations of the DC magnetic field. We show that in different time scales the transient response has different origin. In the time scale of milliseconds the transient response of samples in the critical state is ascribable to processes of flux redistribution induced by the switching on/off of the microwave field. At longer times, the time evolution of the second harmonic signal can be ascribed to motion of fluxons induced by the variation of the DC magnetic field. In particular, di…

Additional file 3: of RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets

Summary of enriched and underrepresented genes. Summary of enriched and underrepresented genes in AGO2 and GW182-IP vs FT comparisons performed by SAMR (column 2–3). The enrichment results obtained with the REA algorithm are reported in columns 4–5. Columns 6 and 7 report the 3’UTR and Coding region (CR) lengths respectively. In columns 8–21 we report the number of binding sites predicted by Targetscan in the 3’UTR and the Coding region of seven highly expressed miRNAs. (XLS 294 kb)

Additional file 2: of RIP-Chip analysis supports different roles for AGO2 and GW182 proteins in recruiting and processing microRNA targets

Gene set enrichment analysis results with seven top expressed miRNA predicted targets sets. Predicted targets of miRNAs (column 1) were predicted with three different target prediction tools (column 2). The total number of predicted targets is indicated in column 3. Five lists of genes were analyzed. For each list of genes the number of genes in common with the predicted targets and the associated hypergeometric test pvalue are provided. The total number of genes considered in the analysis is 16,392. The five considered lists are: a list of genes enriched in AGO2 IP sample from [13]; lists of genes enriched in AGO2 IP vs IN and IP vs FT samples; lists of genes enriched in GW182 IP vs IN and…