Elucidating the Role of microRNAs in Cancer Through Data Mining Techniques

microRNAs (miRNAs) have been shown to play a crucial role in the mostimportant biological processes and their dysregulation has been connectedto a variety of diseases, including cancer. The number of computationaltools for the analysis of miRNA related data is continuously increasing.They range from simple look-up resources to more sophisticated tools forfunctional analysis of miRNAs. These systems may help to investigate therole of miRNAs in key biological processes and their involvement in diseases.The ultimate goal is to allow the development of regulatory modelsdescribing complex processes and the effects of their dysregulation.Here we review the most important and recent methods for the analysisof miRNA expression pro fi les and the tools available on the web for targetprediction and functional analysis of miRNAs.Particular emphasis is given to the integration of heterogeneous data,including target predictions and expression pro fi les, which can be used toinfer miRNA/phenotype associations and for the generation of network models of miRNA function.