There is one more layer
that switches genes off
Inside a cell, thousands of kinds of 22-letter RNA drift about, finding the mRNA that matches them and quietly holding it down. This miRNA layer is completely invisible if you only read mRNA.
This course lays two sets of raw data read from the same cells — 1,976 miRNAs and 24,419 mRNAs — over each other and has you compute, yourself, whether a target really fell when its miRNA rose.
How you'll learn
miRNA-seq at 1,976 × 6 and mRNA-seq at 24,419 × 7. It starts with how you get two tables measured on different machines onto the same ruler.
The seed is bases 2 to 8 of the miRNA. You write the function that tells 8mer, 7mer-m8 and 7mer-1a apart by hand, and sweep it across two million bases of 3'UTR.
You put the sites you found next to TargetScan's list — where they agree, where they don't, and what the disagreement means.
“It went down” is not the end of it. By how many per cent, whether that is distinguishable from chance, and if not, why not.