Changes in microRNA target sites attributed to single nucleotide polymorphisms may influence breast cancer susceptibility

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small, ~22-nt-long endogenous, single-stranded non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) that takes part in post-transcriptional gene silencing through deadenylation, translational repression, and destroying their target messenger RNAs (mRNAs) They exert their regulatory role on the corresponding mRNAs by binding to their 3’UTR, CDS and 5’UTR. When SNP occurs in 3’ UTRs, it changes the mRNA stability and translation by altering the miRNA::mRNA interactions. SNPs present in the 3’UTR of genes associated with breast cancer might contribute to the initiation and susceptibility of the malignancy. In this work, we aim to find the significant pairs of target SNP:miRNA by using the different in silico methods. From our analysis, we screened and got six potential target SNP pairs which have been proposed to be involved in breast cancer risk in females.