“…From the set of predicted targets, we selected FGFR1 and GPC1 for further analysis; the rationale for this selection was based on: (1) the well-established role of FGFR1 and its ligand FGF2 in EC angiogenesis (Gerwins et al, 2000;Presta et al, 2005), (2) the role of GPC1 as a low-affinity receptor for FGF (Zhang et al, 2001) that promotes FGF2 binding to its receptor (FGFR1), potentiating FGF signaling (Fico et al, 2011;Filmus et al, 2008;Gerwins et al, 2000;Iozzo and Sanderson, 2011;Presta et al, 2005;Qiao et al, 2003;Su et al, 2006), (3) the fact that GPC1 has been shown to modulate EC proliferation (Qiao et al, 2012;Qiao et al, 2003;Qiao et al, 2008), (4) the finding that FGFR1 regulation by miRNAs negatively controls EC angiogenic functions (Chamorro-Jorganes et al, 2011), (5) the fact that the regulation of host genes by their intronic miRNA has been shown to be biologically relevant (Nikolic et al, 2010) (Megraw et al, 2010), and (6) the finding that these genes showed a relatively high number of predicted binding sites for miR-149 and miR-149* in their 39 untranslated regions (39UTRs). Indeed, miRNA target algorithms found nine binding sites in the FGFR1 39UTR (three for miR-149 and six for miR-149*) and 12 binding sites in the GPC1 39UTR (four for miR-149 and eight for miR-149*) (supplementary material Fig.…”