Micro-RNA 10a Is Increased in Feline T Regulatory Cells and Increases Foxp3 Protein Expression Following In Vitro Transfection

Yan Wang; Mukta Nag; Joanne L Tuohy; Jonathan E Fogle

doi:10.3390/vetsci4010012

Micro-RNA 10a Is Increased in Feline T Regulatory Cells and Increases Foxp3 Protein Expression Following In Vitro Transfection

Vet Sci. 2017 Feb 21;4(1):12. doi: 10.3390/vetsci4010012.

Authors

Yan Wang^{1

2}, Mukta Nag³, Joanne L Tuohy⁴, Jonathan E Fogle⁵

Affiliations

¹ North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Population Health and Pathobiology and Comparative Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program (Immunology), 1060 William Moore Drive, Raleigh, NC 27607, USA. ywang102@email.unc.edu.
² Current address: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Medicine, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Lineberger Cancer Center, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. ywang102@email.unc.edu.
³ North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Population Health and Pathobiology and Comparative Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program (Immunology), 1060 William Moore Drive, Raleigh, NC 27607, USA. mnag@ncsu.edu.
⁴ North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Population Health and Pathobiology and Comparative Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program (Immunology), 1060 William Moore Drive, Raleigh, NC 27607, USA. jltuohy@ncsu.edu.
⁵ North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Population Health and Pathobiology and Comparative Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program (Immunology), 1060 William Moore Drive, Raleigh, NC 27607, USA. jefogle@ncsu.edu.

Abstract

CD4⁺CD25⁺Foxp3⁺ T regulatory (Treg) cells are activated during the course of lentiviral infection and exhibit heightened suppressor function when compared to Treg cells from uninfected controls. Foxp3 is essential to Treg cell function and multiple studies have documented that lentivirus-activated Treg cells exhibit heightened Foxp3 expression when compared to Treg cells from uninfected controls. Our hypothesis was that lentivirus-induced micro-RNAs (miRNAs) contribute to heightened Treg cell suppressor function by stabilizing Foxp3 expression. We demonstrated that CD4⁺CD25⁺ T cells from both feline immunodeficiency virus infected (FIV⁺) cats and uninfected control cats exhibit increased miRNA 10a and 21 levels compared to autologous CD4⁺CD25^- T cells but there was no difference in the levels of these miRNAs when Treg cells from FIV⁺ cats were compared to Treg cells from uninfected controls. Further, there was no increase in Foxp3 mRNA following transfection of miRNA 10a or 21 into a feline cell line. However, transfection with miRNA 10a resulted in increased Foxp3 protein expression.

Keywords: Foxp3; T regulatory cell; feline immunodeficiency virus; microRNA.

Abstract

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