Identifying potentially novel micro-RNAs in human embryonic stem cells derived mesenchymal stem cells.

• Main Author: Tang, Zixian.
• Other Authors: School of Biological Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Biological sciences::Genetics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/16857
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Just a decade after being discovered, many important roles have been attributed to microRNA (miRNA), including post-transcriptional gene regulation, cellular differentiation and development and progression of diseases such as cancer. Our collaborator had previously sequenced purified exosomal RNA from the conditioned medium of human embryonic stem cell-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hESC-MSC) using deep sequencing techniques. We developed an in-house miRNA prediction pipeline to predict potentially novel miRNAs which are hidden within the deep sequencing data. We detected a total of 36 unique candidates, of which 7 were novel hits without any genomic annotation. Using a select group of 3 candidates, we conducted network analysis to reveal the bioprocess that these putative miRNAs are involved in. We also detected evidence which suggest Dicer processing of non-coding RNAs (ncRNA) to yield small ~22nt RNA products which may act as miRNAs. Our findings suggest that there may be additional mechanisms of miRNA biogenesis, namely from enzymatic processing of other ncRNAs and highlighted the challenges facing miRNA prediction from high throughput deep sequencing data.