LAUSR

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), as a kind of small non-coding RNA molecules (~22 nucleotides in length), were estimated to regulate as much as 60 % of the human protein-coding genes (1,2). miRNAs modulated the levels of post-transcriptionally targeted genes, according to their complementary sequences in the 3’/5’-untranslated regions or the open reading frames of the messenger RNAs (mRNAs) (3,4). Meanwhile, the previous study has demonstrated that miRNAs might be promising biomarkers for cancer classification and outcome prediction (5). The possible inferences were that miRNAs participated in multiple complex processes related to cancer development and progression, such as proliferation, metabolism, differentiation, and apoptosis (6,7). Therefore, the investigation of miRNA functions could offer an excellent approach to elucidate the complex pathological mechanisms underlying malignant tumors, such as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Currently, several methods have been proposed to identify miRNA targets with sequence data or to study miRNA-mRNA interaction by incorporating expression data into their regulatory network (8,9). Nonetheless, results from different predicted methods were generally inconsistent, even with a high rate of false positives and false Original Article