Framework for microRNA variant annotation and prioritization using human population and disease datasets.

MicroRNA (miRNA) expression is frequently deregulated in human disease, in contrast, disease-associated miRNA mutations are understudied. We developed Annotative Database of miRNA Elements, ADmiRE, which combines multiple existing and new biological annotations to aid prioritization of causal miRNA variation. We annotated 10,206 mature (3,257 within seed region) miRNA variants from multiple large sequencing datasets including gnomAD (15,496 genomes; 123,136 exomes). The pattern of miRNA variation closely resembles protein-coding exonic regions, with no difference between intragenic and intergenic miRNAs (P = 0.56), and high confidence miRNAs demonstrate higher sequence constraint (P