Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in the regulation of cell growth, differentiation, apoptosis, and carcinogenesis. Deregulated miRNAs are found in blood cells of cancer patients recently.
Aim: This study aims to screen the differentially expressed miRNAs (DE-miRNAs) which could discriminate lung cancers from non-cancerous lung tissues as well as molecular signatures that differ in tumor histology.
Materials and methods: miRNA expression profiles of GSE17681 was downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus database. Three test methods were used to identify DE-miRNAs between lung cancer tissue and healthy controls. Target genes of DE-miRNAs were retrieved from three databases and mapped to KEGG to investigate their roles in lung cancer. Further, a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed used STRING and Cytoscape.
Results: A total of 17 DE-miRNAs were identified. Among them, hsa-miR-339-5p draw specific attention. Pathway analysis revealed that target genes of RASSF1 and KRAS play roles as oncogene or tumor suppressor gene in the progression of lung cancer. Besides, Target genes of RASSF1 and ERBB4 formed a module in the PPI network. Functional analysis suggested biological process of response to hypoxia was significantly enriched.
Conclusions: hsa-miR-339-5p play important role in the regulation of lung cancer and it may be potential to be used as biomarker to predict lung cancer progression.