2.3 Identification of miRNA targets
The MiRWalk 2.0 database (http://mirwalk.umm.uni-heidelberg.de/) integrates some miRNA databases and provides a huge amount of
predicted and experimentally validated information about the binding
targets of miRNAs (Sticht et al., 2018). We obtained the results of
significant DEMs and their target mRNAs from the MiRwalk 2.0 retrieval
system. Then, we used an online webtool, Venn diagrams
(http://bioinformatics.psb.ugent.be/webtools/Venn/)
to screen the genes from the intersection between the DEGs obtained from
the GEO dataset and the targeted mRNAs predicted by MiRwalk 2.0. These
intersected genes were selected as significant DEGs.