Scratch2, a Snail Superfamily Member, Is Regulated by miR-125b

Carolina Purcell Goes; Felipe Monteleone Vieceli; Shirley Mirna De La Cruz; Marcos Simões-Costa; Chao Yun Irene Yan

doi:10.3389/fcell.2020.00769

Scratch2, a Snail Superfamily Member, Is Regulated by miR-125b

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2020 Aug 25:8:769. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2020.00769. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Carolina Purcell Goes^{1

2}, Felipe Monteleone Vieceli¹, Shirley Mirna De La Cruz¹, Marcos Simões-Costa², Chao Yun Irene Yan¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
² Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States.

Abstract

Scratch2 is a transcription factor expressed in a very restricted population of vertebrate embryonic neural cell precursors involved in their survival, differentiation, and migration. The mechanisms that control its expression remain unknown and could contribute towards our understanding of gene regulation during neural differentiation and evolution. Here we investigate the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the Scrt2 post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism. We identified binding sites for miR-125b and -200b in the Scrt2 3'UTR in silico. We confirmed the repressive-mediated activity of the Scrt2 3'UTR through electroporation of luciferase constructs into chick embryos. Further, both CRISPR/Cas9-mediated deletion of miR-125b/-200b responsive elements from chicken Scrt2 3'UTR and expression of miRNAs sponges increased Scrt2 expression field, suggesting a role for these miRNAs as post-transcriptional regulators of Scrt2. The biological effect of miR-125b titration was much more pronounced than that of miR-200b. Therefore, we propose that, after transcription, miR-125b fine-tunes the Scrt2 expression domain.

Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9; Scratch2; Snail superfamily; miRNA; neural tube.