Figure 2. Verification of miRNA expression in validation cohort by qRT-PCR.

Relative expression levels of miR-211, let-7i, miR-451a, miR-451a.1, miR-203 and miR-205 (not shown), identified by NGS, were compared between independent patient specimens of normal skin (NS), common nevus (CN), melanoma in situ (MIS) and primary cutaneous melanoma (PCM) (A). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for miR-211accurately discriminated between diagnostic disease groups, i.e. PCM from CN (AUC = 0.933) (B). The insets show representative PCM and CN used in the study. ROC curve for miR-211accurately discriminated between dysplastic nevus (DN) and CN (AUC = 0.951) (C). The qRT-PCR results were expressed as RQ and shown as log values in boxplots: box starts from 1^st quartile and ends at 3^rd quartile; cross represents mean; line represents median; notch shows median confidence interval; the ends of whiskers represent the minimum and maximum of the data that are not outliers; and black dots are outliers.