Gene expression profiling analysis reveals that the long non‑coding RNA uc.412 is involved in mesangial cell proliferation

Abstract

Hyperproliferation of mesangial cells (MCs) is the central pathological feature observed in certain human renal diseases. Furthermore, the long non-coding RNA uc.412 is regulated by transforming growth factor β1 in mesangial cells in vitro. The present study aimed to investigate whether uc.412 serves a role in renal fibrosis and whether it may be considered as a therapeutic target in mesangial proliferative kidney diseases. The results demonstrated that uc.412 overexpression significantly increased MC proliferation. The transcriptional profile of MCs overexpressing uc.412 was assessed by RNA sequencing. A total of 462 up- and 843 downregulated genes were identified (|fold change| ≥1.5), and reverse transcription-quantitative PCR was used to determine the expression of these differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Subsequently, the potential function of these DEGs was determined by bioinformatics analyses. The results indicated that these DEGs were involved in numerous signaling pathways associated with MC proliferation. The downstream association between up- and downregulated genes was constructed via the STRING database. The protein-protein interaction network indicated that serpin family E member 1 and matrix metallopeptidase 3 may be hub proteins. In conclusion, the present study provided novel insight into the role of uc.412 in MC proliferation, which may aid in the development of novel treatment for mesangial proliferative kidney diseases.

Reference genes for mesangial cell and podocyte qPCR gene expression studies under high-glucose and renin-angiotensin-system blocker conditions

“…As long-established cell lines in literature, mesangial cells and podocytes are important biological samples to determine the best reference gene -many researchers in the field are focused on these structures (42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47) and the data provided by our work could potentially influence many studies, providing support to avoid wrong interpretation of results and its influence in downstream analysis and further conclusions.…”

Long Noncoding RNA uc.412 Promotes Mesangial Cell Fibrosis via Binding ELAVL1 in Glomerulosclerosis

“…We found that ELAVL1 was the binding protein for uc.412 (Figure 4a). Previous results using sequencing also showed that ELAVL1 expression was elevated after uc.412 overexpression [14]. Therefore, ELAVL1 was identi ed as the appropriate binding protein for uc.412.…”

“…Meanwhile, Sun et al showed that lncRNA Erbb4-IR, which was induced by TGF-β1, promoted renal brosis via a Smad3-dependent mechanism [13]. Moreover, by using RNA-seq, we previously identi ed that lncRNA uc.412 was upregulated during the process of MCs proliferation [14].…”

Reference genes for mesangial cell and podocyte qPCR gene expression studies under high-glucose and renin-angiotensin-system blocker conditions

“…As long-established cell lines in the literature, mesangial cells and podocytes are important biological samples to determine the best reference gene-many researchers in the field are focused on these structures [54][55][56][57][58][59], and the data provided by our work could potentially influence many studies, providing support to avoid incorrect interpretation of results and their influence in downstream analysis and further conclusions.…”