This paper discusses the problem of horizontal (non-hierarchical) navigation in modern educational courseware. We will look at why horizontal links disappear, how to support horizontal navigation in modern hyper-courseware, and our earlier attempts to provide horizontal navigation in Web-based electronic textbooks. Here, we present map-based navigation -a new approach to support horizontal navigation in open corpus educational courseware that we are currently investigating. We will describe the mechanism behind this approach, present a system KnowledgeSea that implements this approach, and provide some results of a classroom study of this system.
Background
Non-coding RNAs include different classes of molecules with regulatory functions. The most studied are microRNAs (miRNAs) that act directly inhibiting mRNA expression or protein translation through the interaction with a miRNAs-response element. Other RNA molecules participate in the complex network of gene regulation. They behave as competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA), acting as natural miRNA sponges to inhibit miRNA functions and modulate the expression of RNA messenger (mRNA). It became evident that understanding the ceRNA–miRNA–mRNA crosstalk would increase the functional information across the transcriptome, contributing to identify new potential biomarkers for translational medicine.
Results
We present miRTissue ce, an improvement of our original miRTissue web service. By introducing a novel computational pipeline, miRTissue ce provides an easy way to search for ceRNA interactions in several cancer tissue types. Moreover it extends the functionalities of previous miRTissue release about miRNA-target interaction in order to provide a complete insight about miRNA mediated regulation processes. miRTissue ce is freely available at http://tblab.pa.icar.cnr.it/mirtissue.html.
Conclusions
The study of ceRNA networks and its dynamics in cancer tissue could be applied in many fields of translational biology, as the investigation of new cancer biomarker, both diagnostic and prognostic, and also in the investigation of new therapeutic strategies of intervention. In this scenario, miRTissue ce can offer a powerful instrument for the analysis and characterization of ceRNA-ceRNA interactions in different tissue types, representing a fundamental step in order to understand more complex regulation mechanisms.
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