Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) has been extensively exploited to study stem cell physiology in the field of mechanobiology and microfluidic chips due to their transparency, low cost and ease of fabrication. However, its intrinsic high hydrophobicity renders a surface incompatible for prolonged cell adhesion and proliferation. Plasma-treated or protein-coated PDMS shows some improvement but these strategies are often short-lived with either cell aggregates formation or cell sheet dissociation. Recently, chemical functionalization of PDMS surfaces has proved to be able to stabilize long-term culture but the chemicals and procedures involved are not user- and eco-friendly. Herein, we aim to tailor greener and biocompatible PDMS surfaces by developing a one-step bio-inspired polydopamine coating strategy to stabilize long-term bone marrow stromal cell culture on PDMS substrates. Characterization of the polydopamine-coated PDMS surfaces has revealed changes in surface wettability and presence of hydroxyl and secondary amines as compared to uncoated surfaces. These changes in PDMS surface profile contribute to the stability in BMSCs adhesion, proliferation and multipotency. This simple methodology can significantly enhance the biocompatibility of PDMS-based microfluidic devices for long-term cell analysis or mechanobiological studies.

Atherosclerosis is a chronic and multifactorial inflammatory disease and is closely associated with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. circRNAs can act as competing endogenous RNAs to mRNAs and function in various diseases. However, there is little known about the function of circRNAs in atherosclerosis. In this study, three rabbits in the case group were fed a high-fat diet to induce atherosclerosis and another three rabbits were fed a normal diet. To explore the biological functions of circRNAs in atherosclerosis, we analyzed the circRNA, miRNA and mRNA expression profiles using RNA-seq. Many miRNAs, mRNAs and circRNAs were identified as significantly changed in atherosclerosis. We next predicted miRNA-target interactions with the miRanda tool and constructed a differentially expressed circRNA-miRNA-mRNA triple network. A gene ontology enrichment analysis showed that genes in the network were involved in cell adhesion, cell activation and the immune response. Furthermore, we generated a dysregulated circRNA-related ceRNAs network and found seven circRNAs (ocu-cirR-novel-18038, -18298, -15993, -17934, -17879, -18036 and -14389) were related to atherosclerosis. We found these circRNAs also functioned in cell adhesion, cell activation and the immune response. These results show that the crosstalk between circRNAs and their competing mRNAs might play crucial roles in the development of atherosclerosis.

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