Measuring the Expression of microRNAs Regulated by Androgens

The discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs) provided yet another mechanism of gene expression regulation. miRNAs have recently been also implicated in many diseases, including prostate cancer (PC). As PC is a highly androgen-dependent disease, extensive effort has been invested to identify the miRNAs that are androgen regulated. However, relatively few of them have been shown to be directly androgen regulated in PC. In this chapter we introduce the commonly used techniques to study the androgen regulation of miRNAs. The most cost-effective tool to profile global miRNA expression is microarray-based hybridization, whereas real-time quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) is commonly used for the study of individual miRNAs.