title: Variability of miRNA expression during the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into retinal pigment epithelial cells.
abstract: Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells can be induced to differentiate into retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). MiRNAs have been characterized and found playing important roles in the differentiation process of ESCs, but their length and sequence heterogeneity (isomiRs), and their non-canonical forms of miRNAs are underestimated or ignored. In this report, we found some non-canonical miRNAs (dominant isomiRs) in all differentiation stages, and 27 statistically significant editing sites were identified in 24 different miRNAs. Moreover, we found marked major-to-minor arm-switching events in 14 pre-miRNAs during the hESC to RPE cell differentiation phases. Our study for the first time reports exploring the variability of miRNA expression during the differentiation of hESCs into RPE cells and the results show that miRNA variability is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the ESC differentiation.
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China; Key Laboratory of Ecological Remediation and Safe Utilization of Heavy Metal-Polluted Soils, College of Hunan Province, Xiangtan 411201, China. Electronic address: zdyuan@hnust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Zhidong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China.
authors.forename: Suping
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China; Key Laboratory of Ecological Remediation and Safe Utilization of Heavy Metal-Polluted Soils, College of Hunan Province, Xiangtan 411201, China.
authors.forename: Mingli
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Diagnosis, Dongguan Scientific Research Center, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan 523808, China.
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China; Key Laboratory of Ecological Remediation and Safe Utilization of Heavy Metal-Polluted Soils, College of Hunan Province, Xiangtan 411201, China.
authors.forename: Lili
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China; Key Laboratory of Ecological Remediation and Safe Utilization of Heavy Metal-Polluted Soils, College of Hunan Province, Xiangtan 411201, China.
authors.forename: Shuhua
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China.
authors.forename: Yuanchang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China; Key Laboratory of Ecological Remediation and Safe Utilization of Heavy Metal-Polluted Soils, College of Hunan Province, Xiangtan 411201, China.
authors.forename: Yuandong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China.
authors.forename: Yufeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China.
authors.forename: Ting
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Huang
mesh_terms: D002454:Cell Differentiation; D053595:Embryonic Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D008268:Macular Degeneration / Q000473:pathology; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D055213:Retinal Pigment Epithelium / Q000166:cytology*; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs
keywords: Embryonic stem cell; Human; IsomiR; Retinal pigment epithelium cell