Calcium sulfate (CaS) is a highly biocompatible material and enhances bone formation in vivo. However, how CaS alters osteoblast activity to promote bone formation is incompletely understood. We therefore investigated the translation regulation in osteoblasts exposed to CaS by using microRNA microarray techniques. Transduction, transcription, and translation are the three levels of regulation of cell activity. Recently, a new type of translation regulation has been identified: RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi is a process in which microRNA, (miRNA), that is, noncoding RNAs of 19-23 nucleotides can induce sequence-specific mRNA degradation and/or translational repression. The human genome encodes a few hundred miRNAs that can post-transcriptionally repress thousands of genes. The miRNA oligonucleotide microarray provides a novel method of carrying out genome-wide miRNA profiling in human samples. By using miRNA microarrays containing 329 probes designed from Human miRNA sequences, we identified in osteoblast-like cells line (MG-63) cultured with CaS (Surgiplaster, Classimplant, Roma, Italy) several miRNA whose expression is significantly modified. The data reported are, to our knowledge, the first study on translation regulation in osteoblasts exposed to CaS. They could be relevant to a better understanding of the molecular mechanism of bone regeneration and as a model for comparing other materials with similar clinical effects.
(c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.