Analyzing mRNA and microRNA co-expression profiles to identify pathways and their potential regulators in ER+ and ER- breast tumors

Transcription factors and microRNAs are both considered pivotal regulators of gene expression. Numerous computational methods have been developed to predict their targets. These methods, although powerful, provide a static snapshot of how genes may be regulated by transcription factors and microRNAs. We propose a method that combines these prediction data with co-expression analysis and a supervised learning algorithm to determine the main regulators in different pathways of ER+ and ER- tumors.