miRNAs target gene prediction and functional enrichment
In order to elucidate the mechanism of differentially expressed miRNAs, we predicted the target genes of miRNAs using Targetscan (V5.0) and miRanda (v3.3a). In the prediction results, the mRNAs with the highest targeting score was selected as the target gene of miRNAs(Table 3). To find the potential biological associations of differential miRNAs, we performed GO and KEGG pathway enrichment on these 36 mRNAs. The GO term is shown in Fig4A, GO enrichment results showed that differentially expressed miRNAs target genes were mainly involved in “inflammatory response”, “immune response”, “signal transduction”, “cytokine-mediumed signaling pathway”, “negative regulation of apoptotic process” and “aging” biologocal process. And these mRNAs may participate in the formation of membrance, cytoplasma, plasma membrance, cytosol and nucleus. KEGG enrichment analysis showed that pathways mainly included “cysteine and methionine metablism”, “Notch signaling pathway”, “ferroptosis”, and “antigen processing and presentation” in the Echinococcus multilocularis infection(Fig 4B). These results showed that E. multiloculari s infection can affect liver metabolic function and changes in signaling pathways.
Table 3 miRNA target gene prediction