Single nucleotide polymorphisms in microRNAs action as biomarkers for breast cancer

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been recently described as small noncoding RNAs that are involved in numerous crucialphysiological processes, such as cell cycles, differentiation, development, and metabolism. Thus, dysregulation of these moleculescould lead to several severe disorders, including breast cancer (BC). Ongoing investigations in malignant growth diagnostics havedistinguished miRNAs as promising disease biomarkers. As with any other mRNAs, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in DNAsequence encoding for miRNA (miR-SNPs) indeed lead to potential changes in the function of miRNA. In this study, miR-SNPs locatedin different miRNA sequence regions, which have been associated with BC in different ways, and the potential mechanisms of how thesemiR-SNPs develop the risk of the disease were discussed.