Elucidating the role of microRNAs in cancer through data mining techniques

microRNAs (miRNAs) have been shown to play a crucial role in the most important biological processes and their dysregulation has been connected to a variety of diseases, including cancer. The number of computational tools for the analysis of miRNA related data is continuously increasing. They range from simple look-up resources to more sophisticated tools for functional analysis of miRNAs. These systems may help to investigate the role of miRNAs in key biological processes and their involvement in diseases. The ultimate goal is to allow the development of regulatory models describing complex processes and the effects of their dysregulation.Here we review the most important and recent methods for the analysis of miRNA expression profiles and the tools available on the web for target prediction and functional analysis of miRNAs.Particular emphasis is given to the integration of heterogeneous data, including target predictions and expression profiles, which can be used to infer miRNA/phenotype associations and for the generation of network models of miRNA function.