Abstract
Transcription factors (TFs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) form a gene regulatory network (GRN) at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level in living cells. However, this network has not been well characterized, especially in regards to the mutual regulations between TFs and miRNAs in cancers. In this study, we collected those regulations inferred by ChIP-Seq or CLIP-Seq to construct the GRN formed by TFs, miRNAs, and target genes. To increase the reliability of the proposed network and examine the regulation activity of TFs and miRNAs, we further incorporated the mRNA and miRNA expression profiles in seven cancer types using The Cancer Genome Atlas data. We observed that regulation rewiring was prevalent during tumorigenesis and found that the rewired regulatory feedback loops formed by TFs and miRNAs were highly associated with cancer. Interestingly, we identified one regulatory feedback loop between STAT1 and miR-155-5p that is consistently activated in all seven cancer types with its function to regulate tumor-related biological processes. Our results provide insights on the losing equilibrium of the regulatory feedback loop between STAT1 and miR-155-5p influencing tumorigenesis.