mirPub

mirPub indexes miRNA-related publications in MEDLINE and extracts associations among microRNAs, diseases, tissues, cell types, and genes using text mining.

Key Features:

• Advanced Search Capabilities: Employs text mining across MEDLINE to identify articles mentioning specific miRNAs and to mitigate inconsistent miRNA nomenclature.
• Integration with Curated Databases: Integrates multiple curated databases to enhance coverage and reliability of miRNA-related information.
• Crowdsourcing Approach: Incorporates user-contributed annotations via a crowdsourcing model to enrich the literature mappings.
• Interactive Visualization Service: Generates interactive visualizations that illustrate the temporal evolution of miRNA data and literature.
• Tag Clouds for Disease, Cell Types, and Tissues: Produces tag clouds summarizing publication relevance to specific diseases, cell types, and tissues.
• Access to TarBase 6.0 Data: Provides access to TarBase 6.0 to link publications to genes and experimentally supported miRNA targets.

Scientific Applications:

• Track miRNA Nomenclature Evolution: Track the historical evolution of miRNA nomenclature and assess its impact on literature retrieval.
• Identify Key Publications: Identify seminal and relevant publications for specific miRNAs or miRNA families.
• Map miRNA–Disease and Tissue Associations: Map associations between miRNAs and diseases, tissues, and cell types to study biological roles and trends.
• Investigate Gene–miRNA Interactions: Investigate experimentally supported gene–miRNA interactions using integrated TarBase 6.0 data.

Methodology:

Text mining of MEDLINE, integration of multiple curated databases including TarBase 6.0, generation of tag clouds and interactive visualizations, and incorporation of crowdsourced user annotations.