Determining influential miRNA targets in diseases using influence diffusion model

miRNAs (non-coding RNAs of ~20--22 nt size) exhibit a self-regulatory mechanism through which they act as positive/negative regulators of expression of genes and other miRNAs. This has direct implications in the regulation of various signaling pathways and types of cancers. We use information diffusion theory to quantify influence diffusion in a miRNA-miRNA regulation network across 'Carcinoma' diseases and determine critical miRNAs which play an influential role. We demonstrate that using this model, we can find important disease-specific miRNAs which tend to work closely. These results prove to be significant based on validation with previously established methods.