About miRactDB

It has been increasingly accepted that microRNA (miRNA) can both activate and suppress gene expression, directly or indirectly, under particular circumstances. Yet, a systematic study on the switch in their interaction pattern between activation and suppression, or between normal and cancer conditions based on multi-omics evidences is not available. To address this gap, we built miRactDB, a DataBase for miRNA-gene interaction, aiming to provide a versatile resource and platform for annotation and interpretation of miRNA and gene relations. We conducted a comprehensive survey and analysis on miRNA-gene interactions and their biological implications across tissue types in both tumor and normal conditions, based on 8375 patient samples across 31 cancer types and 20 normal tissues in TCGA, 941 cancer cell lines across 25 tissue origins in CCLE and 11,688 samples across 30 healthy tissues in GTEx databases. We particularly explored the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms potentially contributing to the positive correlation, including identification of miRNA binding sites in the gene coding sequence and promoter regions of partner genes. With miRactDB, the users can access a variety of annotations, including miRNA and gene summary, expression level over tumor progression stage, correlation switch between conditions, host gene information, evidence of indirect activation and co-transcription and local super-enhancer enrichment, miRNA binding sites along whole gene structure, and clinical relevance. Therefore, miRactDB provides a unique resource for the cancer and genomics communities to screen, prioritize and rationalize their candidates of miRNA-gene interactions, in both normal and cancer scenarios.