Inferring probabilistic miRNA–mRNA interaction signatures in cancers: a role-switch approach

Abstract Aberrant microRNA (miRNA) expression is implicated in tumorigenesis. The underlying mechanisms are unclear because the regulations of each miRNA on potentially hundreds of mRNAs are sample specific. We describe a novel approach to infer Probabilistic MiRNA–mRNA Interaction Signature (‘ProMISe’) from a single pair of miRNA–mRNA expression profile. Our model considers mRNA and miRNA competition as a probabilistic function of the expressed seeds (matches). To demonstrate ProMISe, we extensively exploited The Cancer Genome Atlas data. As a target predictor, ProMISe