406995

MIR181A1

MIR213|MIRN181A1|MIRN213|hsa-mir-181a-1|mir-213;microRNA 181a-1;MIR181A1;microRNA 181a-1

hsa-mir-213|microRNA 213

1q32.1

ncRNA

microRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs which play essential roles in many important biological processes. Therefore, their dysfunction is associated with a variety of human diseases, including cancer. Increasing evidence shows that miRNAs can act as oncogenes or tumor suppressors, and although there is great interest in research into these cancer-associated miRNAs, little is known about them. In this study, we performed a comprehensive analysis of putative human miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors. We found that miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors clearly show different patterns in function, evolutionary rate, expression, chromosome distribution, molecule size, free energy, transcription factors, and targets. For example, miRNA oncogenes are located mainly in the amplified regions in human cancers, whereas miRNA tumor suppressors are located mainly in the deleted regions. miRNA oncogenes tend to cleave target mRNAs more frequently than miRNA tumor suppressors. These results indicate that these two types of cancer-associated miRNAs play different roles in cancer formation and development. Moreover, the patterns identified here can discriminate novel miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors with a high degree of accuracy. This study represents the first large-scale bioinformatic analysis of human miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors. Our findings provide help for not only understanding of miRNAs in cancer but also for the specific identification of novel miRNAs as miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors. In addition, the data presented in this study will be valuable for the study of both miRNAs and cancer.

microRNAs are a class of small endogenous non-coding RNAs that function as post-transcriptional regulators. In our previous study, we found that miR-181b was significantly downregulated in human gastric adenocarcinoma tissue samples compared to the adjacent normal gastric tissues. In this study, we confirm the down-regulation of miR-181b in human gastric cancer cell lines versus the gastric epithelial cells. Overexpression of miR-181b suppressed the proliferation and colony formation rate of gastric cancer cells. miR-181b downregulated the expression of cAMP responsive element binding protein 1 (CREB1) by binding its 3 untranslated region. Overexpression of CREB1 counteracted the suppression of growth in gastric cancer cells caused by ectopic expression of miR-181b. These results indicate that miR-181b may function as a tumor suppressor in gastric adenocarcinoma cells through negative regulation of CREB1.