Expression levels of microRNAs are not associated with their regulatory activities

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate their targets by triggering mRNA degradation or translational repression. The negative relationship between miRNAs and their targets suggests that the regulatory effect of a miRNA could be determined from the expression levels of its targets. Here, we investigated the relationship between miRNA activities determined by computational programs and miRNA expression levels by using data in which both mRNA and miRNA expression from the same samples were measured. We found that different from the intuitive expectation one might have, miRNA activity shows very weak correlation with miRNA expression, which indicates complex regulating mechanisms between miRNAs and their target genes.