Figure 3

Bioinformatic predictions of microRNA target genes. A. Density plot of Pearson correlation coefficients between expression of miRNA and their target genes (continuous line) predicted by RNA22 algorithm. Number of genes is expressed as% of total predictions indicated within each plot. The distribution of Pearson correlations is clearly shifted towards negative values; the density plot of Pearson correlation coefficient after permutation of the list of microRNAs (dashed line). In this case the distribution is centered around zero. Several examples are shown, for other microRNAs see the Additional file 6. B. Diagram showing the proportion of bioinformatic predictions made by RNA22 algorithm (taken for 100%) that were supported by transcriptome profiling (black). Light grey shows unsupported predictions. The graphs corresponding to TargetScan predictions are presented in the Additional file 8. C. Comparison of the accuracy of target gene predictions by RNA22 and TargetScan algorithms.% of target genes predicted by both algorithms and supported by transcriptome data is shown.