Abstract 3785: Identification of potential cellular targets for Epstein-Barr virus encoded microRNAs miR-BART7 and miR-BART9 by in silico analysis

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), formally designated human herpesvirus 4 (HHV-4), is an ubiquitous virus that causes lifelong latent infection in over 90% of the world9s human adult population. EBV infection is regarded as carcinogenic to humans and associated with a variety of human cancers, especially endemic Burkitt lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinomas. EBV was the first human virus described to encode viral microRNAs (miRs), but the activity of EBV-encoded miRs in carcinogenesis remains to be fully elucidated. In this study we sought to identify novel potential targets for EBV-encoded miR-BART7 and miR-BART9 using in silico analysis. Mature sequences for EBV-miR-BARTs 7-3p, 7-5p, 9-3p, and 9-5p were retrieved from miRBase (http://www.mirbase.org, version 22) and 3’-UTRs from Homo sapiens were obtained from Ensembl (https://www.ensembl.org, version 92). RNAhybrid, miRanda, and PITA softwares were used for target predictions of miR-binding sites within 3’-UTRs of human mRNAs. Overlapped targets were collected using a custom Python script in such a way that only genes predicted by all the three algorithms were selected and used for gene-enrichment pathway analysis using the Cytoscape with the Reactome FI database plug-in (version 3.6.0). Each gene in a given pathway was counted as one hit using another custom Phyton script, and results were considered significant when P-value This work was supported by Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) under grants 17/20352-0, 17/22312-5 and 17/23393-9. Citation Format: Brunno F. Caetano, Barbara G. Muller-Coan, Rafael L. Coan, Bruno E. Fantinatti, Deilson E. de Oliveira. Identification of potential cellular targets for Epstein-Barr virus encoded microRNAs miR-BART7 and miR-BART9 by in silico analysis [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 3785.