2.5 Combining expression profiles to predict credible miRNA-mRNA pairs
MiRanda (http://www.microrna.org),17Targetscans (http://www.targetscan.org),18and Pictar (http://pictar.mdc-berlin.de/cgi-bin/new_PicTar_mouse.cgi)19,20 were used to predict candidate miRNA-mRNA pairs, and only union sets were examined further. Then, we selected more reliable miRNA-mRNA pairs by combining the gene expression profiles in our chip results; we focused on upregulated miRNA-downregulated mRNA pairs or downregulated miRNA-upregulated mRNA pairs. Finally, for each miRNA, functional enrichment analysis of GO and KEGG pathways on its targets were performed to analyze the possible regulatory effects of miRNA.