Fig. 1

Schematic illustration of ACT. a In step 1, miRNAs that bind to the given circRNA were identified by the presence of binding sites. In addition, the number of binding sites (nbs) for each miRNA was recorded for further analysis in step 3. In step 2, the targets of each miRNA were identified. It should be noted that some genes (colored in blue and pink) were targets of multiple circRNA-associated miRNAs. In step 3, the nbs for miRNAs that bind to the same gene were summed and used for further sorting. b The databases and tools integrated in ACT (see the section on implementation)