A review of 178 microRNAs involved in cardioprotection and cardiac regeneration revealed significant species-specific differences in microRNA regulation and incomplete annotations, highlighting translational challenges.
Can microRNA bioinformatics narrow the gap between animal and human research outputs in cardioprotection and cardiac repair?
While microRNA bioinformatics can predict novel regulatory networks in cardioprotection, successful translation requires rigorous training to mitigate the risk of in-silico models deviating from in vivo realities.
The unsuccessful translation of cardiac regeneration and cardioprotection from animal experiments to clinical applications in humans has raised the question of whether microRNA bioinformatics can narrow the gap between animal and human research outputs. We reviewed the literature for the period between 2000 and 2024 and found 178 microRNAs involved in cardioprotection and cardiac regeneration. On analyzing the orthologs and annotations, as well as downstream regulation, we observed species-specific differences in the diverse regulation of the microRNAs and related genes and transcriptomes, the influence of the experimental setting on the microRNA-guided biological responses, and database-specific bioinformatics results. We concluded that, in addition to reducing the number of in vivo experiments, following the 3R animal experiment rules, the bioinformatics approach allows the prediction of several currently unknown interactions between pathways, coding and non-coding genes, proteins, and downstream regulatory elements. However, a comprehensive analysis of the miRNA-mRNA-protein networks needs a profound bioinformatics and mathematical education and training to appropriately design an experimental study, select the right bioinformatics tool with programming language skills and understand and display the bioinformatics output of the results to translate the research data into clinical practice. In addition, using in-silico approaches, a risk of deviating from the in vivo processes exists, with adverse consequences on the translational research.
Gyöngyösi et al. (Wed,) conducted a review in Cardioprotection and cardiac regeneration. microRNA bioinformatics was evaluated. A review of 178 microRNAs involved in cardioprotection and cardiac regeneration revealed significant species-specific differences in microRNA regulation and incomplete annotations, highlighting translational challenges.