Fig. 1: Workflow of the hybrid discovery pipeline employed in this study.

Candidate microRNAs associated with preterm birth-related insults were identified through publicly available datasets and refined using a systems-level prioritization strategy. Selected miRNAs were quantified in preterm infant plasma using qPCR, followed by computational functional enrichment analysis and Boolean network modeling to predict regulatory roles. In parallel, a subset of samples was analyzed using NGS to validate qPCR findings and assess congruency between methods.