An Overview of Computational Approaches for Prediction of miRNA Genes and their Targets

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a recently identified class of cellular non-coding RNAs that regulates protein expression and growth of a biological system during different stages of life. The active, mature miRNAs are 17-24 bases long, single-stranded RNA molecules expressed in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells and are known to affect the translation or stability of target messenger RNAs (mRNAs). Each miRNA is believed to regulate multiple genes and it is believed that greater than one third of all human genes may be regulated by miRNA molecules. Here in this review we try to focus on the role of these tiny molecules at different aspects of bioprocesses, prediction of miRNAs and their targets from a bioinformatics point of view.