ViTa: prediction of host microRNAs targets on viruses

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are involved in various biological processes by suppressing gene expression. A recent work has indicated that host miRNAs are also capable of regulating viral gene expression by targeting the virus genomes. To investigate regulatory relationships between host miRNAs and related viruses, we present a novel database, namely ViTa, to curate the known virus miRNA genes and the known/putative target sites of human, mice, rat and chicken miRNAs. Known miRNAs are obtained from miRBase. Virus data are collected and referred from ICTVdB, VBRC and VirGen. Experimentally validated miRNA targets on viruses were derived from literatures. Then, miRanda and TargetScan are utilized to predict miRNA targets within virus genomes. ViTa also provides the virus annotations, virus-infected tissues and tissue specificity of host miRNAs. This work also facilitates the comparisons between subtypes of viruses, such as influenza viruses, human liver viruses and the conserved regions between viruses. Both textual and graphical web interfaces are provided to facilitate the data retrieves in the ViTa database. The database is now freely available at http://vita.mbc.nctu.edu.tw/.