Computational Analysis of miRNA Target Identification

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short RNA molecules that regulate the post-transcriptional expression of their target genes – messenger RNAs (mRNAs). Although miRNAs are known to down-regulate the translation or the cleavage of mRNAs, the miRNA-mediated regulation mechanisms still remain largely unknown. Therefore, in order to achieve a better understanding of the biological function of the miRNAs, a critical step is to identify miRNA targets. At present, since the experimental identification of miRNA targets is still difficult, investigators rely mainly on computational methods to identify miRNA targets, and numerous computational methods are currently available. The computational identification of miRNA targets has emerged as a significant field in miRNA target research. In this paper, we summarize the knowledge about the computational identification of miRNA targets, including the principles of miRNA targeting, computational methods for miRNA target prediction, and the databases required for miRNA targeting. Furthermore, we make a comparison analysis of several representative computational target prediction methods in this work.