microRNA-mRNA interaction identification in Wilms tumor using principal component analysis based unsupervised feature extraction

Wilms tumor is one of lethal child renal cancers, for which no known disease causing mechanisms exist. In this paper, we tried to identify possible disease causing microRNA(miRNA)-mRNA pairs (interactions) by analyzing (partially matched) miRNA/mRNA gene expression profiles with the recently proposed principal component analysis based unsupervised feature extraction. It successfully identified multiple miRNA-mRNA pairs whose biological natures are convincing. Correlation coefficients between miRNA and mRNA expression in matched parts of profiles turned out to be significantly negative. Constructed miRNA-mRNA network will be a key to understand Wilms tumor causing mechanisms.