Characterization of microRNA-regulated protein-protein interaction network.

We have performed topological analysis to elucidate the global correlation between microRNA (miRNA) regulation and protein-protein interaction network in human. The analysis showed that target genes of individual miRNA tend to be hubs and bottlenecks in the network. While proteins directly regulated by miRNA might not form a network module themselves, the miRNA-target genes and their interacting neighbors jointly showed significantly higher modularity. Our findings shed light on how miRNA may regulate the protein interaction network.