MethmiRbase : a Database of DNA Methylation and miRNA Expression in Human Cancer

Experimental studies suggested that epigenetic gene silencing play an important role in cancer formation. Aberrant DNA methylation is one of the epigenetic silencing mechanisms related to downregulation or upregulation of miRNA expression in human cancer cells. However, there is still few comprehensive in silico study concerning DNA methylation-mediated miRNA aberrant expression events. Currently there are a number of epigenetic databases but seldom of them integrate DNA-methylation and miRNAs expression to identify epigenetic-regulated miRNA which targeted oncogene or tumor suppressor genes in cancer. We present MethmiRbase (http://ppi.bioinfo.asia.edu.tw/MethmiRbase) a database that made use of meta-analysis to identify potential epigenetic-regulated miRNAs for three human cancers, i.e. lung adenocarcinoma, lung squamous carcinoma and ovarian cancers. We also included experimentally verified cancer-associated miRNA target genes in MethmiRbase.