Table 3 Experimental methods to check the functional interaction between miRNA and target mRNA.

Luciferase reporter assay

[53]

Northern blot analysis

[54]

Quantitative real-time PCR

[55]

Ribonuclease protection assay

[56]

in situ hybridization

[57, 58]

miRNA mimics

[59]

Western blot

[60]

Immunocytochemistry

[61]

Bead-based flow cytometry method

[62]

Suppression of miRNA expression in cells by anti-sense locked-nucleic acid oligonucleotides

[63]

Antagomir assays

[64, 65]

Immunoprecipitation of Ago-bound mRNAs

[66, 67]