Identification and characterization of microRNAs by high through-put sequencing in mesenchymal stem cells and bone tissue from mice of age-related osteoporosis

Xiaoning He; Wenkai Zhang; Li Liao; Xin Fu; Qing Yu; Yan Jin

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071895

Identification and characterization of microRNAs by high through-put sequencing in mesenchymal stem cells and bone tissue from mice of age-related osteoporosis

PLoS One. 2013 Aug 21;8(8):e71895. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0071895. eCollection 2013.

Authors

Xiaoning He¹, Wenkai Zhang, Li Liao, Xin Fu, Qing Yu, Yan Jin

Affiliation

¹ Research and Development Center for Tissue Engineering, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China ; Engineering technology center for tissue engineering of Xi'an, Shaanxi, China ; Department of Oral Histopathology, School of Stomatology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.

Abstract

The functional deficiencies of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) may contribute to the aging process and age-related diseases, such as osteoporosis. Although it has been reported that microRNAs (miRNAs) played an important role in mechanisms of gene regulation of aging, and their expression profiles in MSCs osteogenic differentiation were established in recent years, but it is still elusive for the dynamic patterns of miRNAs in aging process. Importantly, the miRNAs in aged bone tissue had not been yet reported so far. Here, we combined high through-put sequencing with computational techniques to detect miRNAs dynamics in MSCs and bone tissue of age-related osteoporosis. Among the detected miRNAs, 59 identified miRNAs in MSCs and 159 in bone showed significantly differential expressions. And more importantly, there existed 8 up-regulated and 30 down-regulated miRNAs in both MSCs and bone during the aging process, with the majority having a trend of down-regulation. Furthermore, after target prediction and KEGG pathway analysis, we found that their targeted genes were significantly enriched in pathways in cancer, which are complex genetic networks, comprise of a number of age-related pathways. These results strongly suggest that these analyzed miRNAs may be negatively involved in age-related osteoporosis, given that most of them showed a decreased expression, which could lay a good foundation for further functional analysis of these miRNAs in age-related osteoporosis.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Age Factors
Animals
Bone Marrow Cells / metabolism
Bone and Bones / metabolism*
Cells, Cultured
Gene Expression Profiling*
High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / methods*
Male
Mesenchymal Stem Cells / metabolism*
Mice
Mice, Inbred C57BL
MicroRNAs / genetics*
Osteogenesis / genetics
Osteoporosis / genetics*
Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
Signal Transduction / genetics

Substances

MicroRNAs

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Major Scientific Research Program of China (2010CB944800 and 2011CB964700) and the Nature Science Foundation of China (81020108019, 31030033). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.