Abstract
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous noncoding RNAs which participate in diverse biological processes in animals and plants. They are known to join together with transcription factors and downstream gene, forming a complex and highly interconnected regulatory network. To recognize a few overrepresented motifs which are expected to perform important elementary regulatory functions, we constructed a computational model of miRNA-mediated feedforward loops (FFLs) in which a transcription factor (TF) regulates miRNA and targets gene. Based on the different dynamic interactions between miRNA and TF on gene expression, four possible structural topologies of FFLs with two gate functions (AND gate and OR gate) are introduced. We studied the dynamic behaviors of these different motifs. Furthermore, the relationship between the response time and maximal activation velocity of miRNA was investigated. We found that the curve of response time shows nonmonotonic behavior in Co1 loop with OR gate. This may help us to infer the mechanism of miRNA binding to the promoter region. At last we investigated the influence of important parameters on the dynamic response of system. We identified that the stationary levels of target gene in all loops were insensitive to the initial value of miRNA.