In today's bio-medical research, microRNA (miRNAs) are becoming increasingly important for their various roles in human patho-physiologies. However, an integrated resource on how the miRNA regulates (miRNA regulome) such biological events are not available.
An international team of scientists led by Dr. Debmalya Barh from the Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology (IIOAB), Purba Medinipur, WB, India has developed the miRegulome- a unique knowledge-base of miRNA regulomics and analysis that provides a single window for a wide range of data exploration, visualization of miRNA regulome and data interpretation, exploration of new biological events, and biomarker discovery using its integrated highly efficient tools and search engines.
Using the miRegulome v1.0, these researchers are able to identify a novel relationship between obesity and diabetes. It is found that deregulation of mir-27b and mir-143 may affect lipid metabolism, adipocytokine, insulin, and type-2 diabetes pathways and eventually may lead to develop obesity and diabetes. Further, an aberrant expression of mir-27b may play a role in obesity-associated insulin resistance by modulating adipocytokines and Ribavirin resistance in obese patients thus linking obesity with diabetes at a new and deeper molecular level.
Dr. Preetam Ghosh form Dept. of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA, who headed the computing part, describes miRegulome as a powerful tool and according Dr. Barh it will be an essential resource in miRNOmics R&D in coming days.
The work was recently published in Nature Scientific Reports.