SOCS4 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Luciferase assay revealed that upregulating miR-500a-3p decreased, while silencing miR-500a-3p increased the reporter activity driven by the 3′UTRs of SOCS2, SOCS4 and PTPN11 transcripts in dose-dependent manners, but not by the mutant 3′UTRs of these transcripts within miR-500a-3p-binding seed regions in HCC cells (Fig. 2e and f and Additional file 6: Figure S2B).