LncRNA DANCR restrained the survival of mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Ra by sponging miR-1301-3p/miR-5194

Yuliang Qu; Dan Jiang; Minjuan Liu; Hongxia Wang; Tao Xu; Haijin Zhou; Minlan Huang; Weitong Shu; Guangxian Xu

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2023.1119629

LncRNA DANCR restrained the survival of mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Ra by sponging miR-1301-3p/miR-5194

Front Microbiol. 2023 Apr 13:14:1119629. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1119629. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Yuliang Qu^{1

2}, Dan Jiang¹, Minjuan Liu¹, Hongxia Wang^{1

2}, Tao Xu¹, Haijin Zhou¹, Minlan Huang¹, Weitong Shu¹, Guangxian Xu¹

Affiliations

¹ The First Dongguan Affiliated Hospital, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Diagnostics, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan, Guangdong, China.
² School of Clinical Medicine, Ningxia Medical University, Yinchuan, Ningxia, China.

Abstract

Tuberculosis is a worldwide contagion caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). MTB is characterized by intracellular parasitism and is semi-dormant inside host cells. The persistent inflammation caused by MTB can form a granuloma in lesion regions and intensify the latency of bacteria. In recent years, several studies have proven that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play critical roles in modulating autophagy. In our study, the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases were searched for lncRNAs that are associated with tuberculosis. We found that lncRNA differentiation antagonizing non-protein coding RNA (DANCR) increased in the peripheral blood samples collected from 54 pulmonary tuberculosis patients compared to 23 healthy donors. By constructing DANCR overexpression cells, we analyzed the possible cellular function of DANCR. After analyzing our experiments, it was found that the data revealed that upregulation of DANCR facilitated the expression of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3, autophagy-related 4D cysteine peptides, autophagy-related 5, Ras homolog enriched in the brain, and microtubule-associated protein 1A/1B light chain 3 (STAT3, ATG4D, ATG5, RHEB, and LC3, respectively) by sponging miR-1301-3p and miR-5194. Immunofluorescence analysis indicated that DANCR played a positive role in both autophagosome formation and fusion of autolysosomes in macrophages. The colony-forming unit (CFU) assay data also showed that the cells overexpressing DANCR were more efficient in eliminating the intracellular H37Ra strain. Consequently, these data suggest that DANCR restrained intracellular survival of M. tuberculosis by promoting autophagy via miR-1301-3p and miR-5194.

Keywords: DANCR; MTB; autophagy; ceRNA; miRNAs.