Relationship between the density difference of microRNA binding and the evolutionary conservation of 3'UTRs in housekeeping and non-housekeeping human genes

Objective To study the microRNA( miRNA) regulation on the expression of housekeeping and non-housekeeping human genes from the systemic level,and to reveal the influence of conservation at 3'UTRs region for the density difference of miRNA regulatory between the two classes of genes. Methods We obtained miRNA regulation informations for the two classes of genes through the integration analysis of three sequence-based target gene prediction softwares and the conjoint analysis based on gene expression profile data. We also used phastCons-score based evolution analysis to study the conservation of 3'UTRs regions between the two classes of genes. Results Our results showed that housekeeping genes have a significantly higher density of miRNA binding sites and their 3'UTR are relatively conservative. Conclusion These findings highlight the importance of miRNA regulation in housekeeping genes,suggesting that investigating the roles of miRNAs on the robustness of housekeeping genes expression is highly necessary.