Team:Phystech Moscow/Description
Phystech_Moscow
Description
"Downtown Moscow" by Trey Ratcliff is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
We are a team of students from two Russian universities - Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and Skoltech! Our team consists of 10 students and most of us are postgraduates!It is our first time participating in the iGEM competition. We are creating a free open source web-based tool that can be easily used by scientists from all over the world. We propose a new neural network-based algorithm that combines various parameters as input.
Recently, long non-coding RNAs have turned out to be key players in development of various diseases, but nevertheless remain poorly studied. The goal of our service is to predict the main targets of long noncoding RNAs.
Micro-RNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are two subclasses of regulatory RNAs both participating in gene expression regulation. Recently, long non-coding RNAs have turned out to be key players in development of various diseases, but nevertheless remain poorly studied.
It also was shown that despite their independent participation in gene regulation miRNAs and lncRNAs can interact in different ways. One of the ways is that lncRNAs can act as a decoy for miRNAs, “sponging” them and preventing them from interacting with their mRNA target. Such mechanisms are shown to play an important role in gene regulation, so it is necessary.
Our tool is proposed to be used for narrowing the list of possible miRNA interacting with particular lncRNAs for further confirmation of interactions in wet lab experiments.
We hope that our project will grow into a valuable tool for researchers helping to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.