Research Paper Volume 10, Issue 4 pp 775—788
Identifying circRNA-associated-ceRNA networks in the hippocampus of Aβ1-42-induced Alzheimer's disease-like rats using microarray analysis
- 1 Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China
- 2 Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410008, China
- 3 Department of Neurology, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China
Received: March 17, 2018 Accepted: April 20, 2018 Published: April 27, 2018
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101427How to Cite
Copyright: Wang et al. This is an open‐access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia worldwide. Accumulating evidence indicates that non-coding RNAs are strongly implicated in AD-associated pathophysiology. However, the role of these ncRNAs remains largely unknown. In the present study, we used microarray analysis technology to characterize the expression patterns of circular RNAs (circRNAs), microRNAs (miRNAs), and mRNAs in hippocampal tissue from Aβ1-42-induced AD model rats, to integrate interaction data and thus provide novel insights into the mechanisms underlying AD. A total of 555 circRNAs, 183 miRNAs and 319 mRNAs were identified to be significantly dysregulated (fold-change ≥ 2.0 and p-value < 0.05) in the hippocampus of AD rats. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was then used to validate the expression of randomly-selected circRNAs, miRNAs and mRNAs. Next, GO and KEGG pathway analyses were performed to further investigate ncRNAs biological functions and potential mechanisms. In addition, we constructed circRNA-miRNA and competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) regulatory networks to determine functional interactions between ncRNAs and mRNAs. Our results suggest the involvement of different ncRNA expression patterns in the pathogenesis of AD. Our findings provide a novel perspective for further research into AD pathogenesis and might facilitate the development of novel therapeutics targeting ncRNAs.