MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression through interactions with target mRNAs, primarily thought to be via seed-mediated binding in the 3′ untranslated region. However, increasing evidence supports the functional importance of non-canonical and seed-independent interactions, as well as miRNA-mediated up-regulation. Existing miRNA-mRNA interaction databases integrate data from diverse experimental approaches but often contain inconsistencies in annotation, redundancy, and variable levels of validation, limiting their utility for sequence-level and mechanistic analyses. Here, we present miRVerified, a high-confidence dataset of 1,913 experimentally validated human miRNA-mRNA interactions curated using stringent inclusion criteria. Interactions were compiled from publicly available resources and filtered to retain only those supported by direct functional reporter assays and sequence-resolved binding evidence. Additional quality control steps included removal of duplicate entries, exclusion of retracted studies, and validation of target site sequences through alignment to the human reference genome (hg38). Both canonical and non-canonical interactions were retained, along with experimentally supported cases of miRNA-mediated up-regulation. The resulting dataset provides binding site-resolved interaction sequences, mutation data, and genomic coordinates. Enrichment analysis demonstrates a significant overrepresentation of conserved targets, supporting biological validity. MiRVerified is designed as a reliable reference resource for benchmarking, predictive modeling, and mechanistic studies of miRNA-mediated gene regulation.
Haddon et al. (Tue,) studied this question.