title: Systematic study of cis-antisense miRNAs in animal species reveals miR-3661 to target PPP2CA in human cells.
abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) suppress targeting gene expression through blocking translation or triggering mRNA degradation and, in general, act in trans, through a partially complementary interaction with the 3' untranslated region (3' UTR) or coding regions of a target gene. Although it has been reported previously that some miRNAs suppress their target genes on the opposite strand with a fully complementary sequence (i.e., natural antisense miRNAs that act in cis), there is no report to systematically study such cis-antisense miRNAs in different animal species. Here we report that cis-antisense miRNAs do exist in different animal species: 48 in Caenorhabditis elegans, 17 in Drosophila, 36 in Mus musculus, and 52 in Homo sapiens using a systematical bioinformatics approach. We show that most of these cis-antisense miRNAs can efficiently reduce the expression levels of their target genes in human cells. We further investigate hsa-miR-3661, one of the predicted cis-antisense miRNAs, in detail and demonstrate that this miRNA directly targets the coding sequence of PPP2CA located on the opposite DNA strand and inhibits the PPP2CA expression. Taken together, these results indicate that cis-antisense miRNAs are conservative and functional in animal species including humans.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Emory University School of Medicine, Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Beijing Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Beijing 100850, China.
authors.forename: Zongcheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Emory University School of Medicine, Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA The First Norman Bethune Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Bailong
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Emory University School of Medicine, Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
authors.forename: Guangnan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Beijing Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Beijing 100850, China.
authors.forename: Ningsheng
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Shao
authors.affiliation: Beijing Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Beijing 100850, China.
authors.forename: Xiaomin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ying
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Emory University School of Medicine, Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA ywang94@emory.edu yingxm@bmi.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Ya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000378:metabolism*; D010766:Phosphorylation; D054648:Protein Phosphatase 2 / Q000378:metabolism*; D016372:RNA, Antisense / Q000378:metabolism*; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs; D016372:RNA, Antisense; D054648:Protein Phosphatase 2
keywords: PPP2CA; cis-antisense; gene expression; human cells; miR-3661; miRNA