Figure 4

Regulation of mRNA/protein expression decoupling by miRNAs. (A) Number of AGO2 binding sites in discordant genes in the four expression patterns. Boxplots show the distribution of AGO2 binding sites in discordant genes and the variation determined by bootstrapping genes within each pattern 1,000 times. The one-sided Wilcoxon test P-value shows the significance of the AGO2 binding site excess in P3 compared with the other three patterns. (B) Difference between the distribution of predicted miRNA-target correlations and the chance background. The curves show predicted miRNA-target distribution of the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients measured based on expression profiles of age-dependent miRNA and protein expression of their predicted target transcripts in the aging interval. The background chance distribution was estimated by generating the same number of predicted miRNA-target pairs based on randomly chosen age-dependent miRNA and target genes within the discordant group of each pattern 1,000 times. The shaded areas show the 95% confidence interval of the correlation coefficients’ chance distribution. The median of background chance distribution was subtracted from both the predicted miRNA-target and the chance background distributions. See also Figure S11 in Additional file 1. (C) The number of age-dependent miRNAs showing predicted target enrichment among discordant genes of the four patterns. Shaded grey bars show the amount of enriched miRNAs found by generating the same number of predicted miRNA-target pairs based on randomly chosen age-dependent miRNA and target genes within each pattern 1,000 times. See also Figure S12 in Additional file 1.