MicroRNA Memory I: The Positive Correlation between Synergistic Effects of MicroRNAs in Cancer and a Novel Quantum Scoring System

Aim: To investigate quantum characters of the microRNA (miRNA) gene as the disease memory device, at the beginning, a novel quantum scoring method was developed and its usability was confirmed by valuating miRNA–miRNA interaction.

Background: In general, activated miRNAs participate in regulation of gene expression via mainly inhibiting translation of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) into proteins. miRNAs select their target mRNAs by the degree of sequence complementarity between miRNAs and target sites on mRNA. Therefore, a precious prediction of miRNA–mRNA interaction would be useful for clear up miRNA–protein functions in biological processes. However, although many computer algorisms for miRNA target prediction have been developed and improved, they still have shown many incorrect results. Thus, much more precise prediction tool in silico by using computers and databases is necessary.

Methods: First, the miRNA–miRNA synergism was investigated according to modified previous algorism, and some synergistically-working miRNA pairs were collected. Next, we developed two new quantum scores, Static Nexus Score (SNS) and then Dynamic Nexus Score (DNS), and calculated them for each synergistic miRNA pair. SNS and DNS were derived from the miRNA-miRNA matrix that calculates quantum interaction between miRNAs from quantum energy in each single miRNA nucleotide. The synergistic activities of the miRNA functional pairs were evaluated upon the fold changes as synergistic effect (SE).

Results: The relation of SE in miRNA functional activity was subsequently examined with DNSs. As a result, positive correlation (R = 0.55, P < .06) was observed between DNS and strength of SE of each synergistic miRNA pair which is related to oncogenesis or tumor suppression.

Conclusions: The single miRNA-miRNA synergism would be important to predict biological function of miRNAs in cancer. This is the first report arguing that miRNA synergism could be showed through calculating DNS of each miRNA pair as miRNA memory device.