Joint masking and self-supervised strategies for inferring small molecule-miRNA associations

Inferring small molecule-miRNA associations (MMAs) is crucial for revealing the intricacies of biological processes and disease mechanisms. Deep learning, renowned for its exceptional speed and accuracy, is extensively used for predicting MMAs. However, given their heavy reliance on data, inaccuracies during data collection can make these methods susceptible to noise interference. To address this challenge, we introduce the joint masking and self-supervised (JMSS)-MMA model. This model synergizes graph autoencoders with a probability distribution-based masking strategy, effectively countering the impact of noisy data and enabling precise predictions of unknown MMAs. Operating in a self-supervised manner, it deeply encodes the relationship data of small molecules and miRNA through the graph autoencoder, delving into its latent information. Our masking strategy has successfully reduced data noise, enhancing prediction accuracy. To our knowledge, this is the pioneering integration of a masking strategy with graph autoencoders for MMA prediction. Furthermore, the JMSS-MMA model incorporates a node-degree–based decoder, deepening the understanding of the network's structure. Experiments on two mainstream datasets confirm the model's efficiency and precision, and ablation studies further attest to its robustness. We firmly believe that this model will revolutionize drug development, personalized medicine, and biomedical research.