TY - JOUR AB - MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of short (approximately 22 nucleotides), non-coding and endogenous RNA molecules that play pivotal roles in the occurrence and development of cancer. The present study aimed to investigate key miRNAs involved in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). Two independent datasets (GSE73182 and GSE113629) were obtained from the GEO database. The differentially expressed miRNAs (DEmiRNAs) between PTC tissues and normal thyroid tissues were analyzed by GEO2R with the Limma R package. Key miRNAs in PTC were identified by the VennDiagram R package. The targets of the key miRNAs were predicted by miRWalk and were functionally enriched by clusterProfiler R package. Five miRNAs including hsa‑miR‑146b-5p, hsa-miR-15a-5p, hsa-miR-21-5p, hsa-miR‑221-3p and hsa-miR-222-3p were identified as key miRNAs in PTC. The expression levels of these key miRNAs were upregulated in PTC. This finding was also confirmed in the other dataset. Target prediction of miRNAs indicated that hsa-miR-146b-5p, hsa-miR-15a-5p, hsa-miR-21-5p, hsa‑miR-221-3p and hsa-miR-222-3p exhibited 2, 41, 3, 14 and 8 target genes, respectively. Enrichment analysis indicated that these key miRNAs were mainly involved in nine biological processes, such as regulation of MAP kinase activity, JNK cascade signaling and regulation of protein serine/threonine kinase activity) and in 28 pathways, including the mitogen associated protein kinase, the sphingolipid, ErbB, Ras and the C-type lectin receptor signaling pathways. In conclusion, the present study identified several key miRNAs in PTC, which serve as potential targets for PTC diagnosis and treatment. AD - Department of Prenatal Diagnostics, Jiaxing Maternity and Children Health Care Hospital, Jiaxing University, Jiaxing, Zhejiang 314000, P.R. China AU - Wang,Jianguo AU - Wu,Liping AU - Jin,Yuxia AU - Li,Suping AU - Liu,Xiaodan DA - 2020/01/01 DO - 10.3892/br.2019.1256 EP - 16 IS - 1 JO - Biomed Rep KW - papillary thyroid carcinoma microRNA data mining bioinformatics PY - 2020 SN - 2049-9434 2049-9442 SP - 11 ST - Identification of key miRNAs in papillary thyroid carcinoma based on data mining and bioinformatics methods T2 - Biomedical Reports TI - Identification of key miRNAs in papillary thyroid carcinoma based on data mining and bioinformatics methods UR - https://doi.org/10.3892/br.2019.1256 VL - 12 ER -