title: Distribution of miRNA expression across human tissues.
abstract: We present a human miRNA tissue atlas by determining the abundance of 1997 miRNAs in 61 tissue biopsies of different organs from two individuals collected post-mortem. One thousand three hundred sixty-four miRNAs were discovered in at least one tissue, 143 were present in each tissue. To define the distribution of miRNAs, we utilized a tissue specificity index (TSI). The majority of miRNAs (82.9%) fell in a middle TSI range i.e. were neither specific for single tissues (TSI > 0.85) nor housekeeping miRNAs (TSI < 0.5). Nonetheless, we observed many different miRNAs and miRNA families that were predominantly expressed in certain tissues. Clustering of miRNA abundances revealed that tissues like several areas of the brain clustered together. Considering -3p and -5p mature forms we observed miR-150 with different tissue specificity. Analysis of additional lung and prostate biopsies indicated that inter-organism variability was significantly lower than inter-organ variability. Tissue-specific differences between the miRNA patterns appeared not to be significantly altered by storage as shown for heart and lung tissue. MiRNAs TSI values of human tissues were significantly (P = 10(-8)) correlated with those of rats; miRNAs that were highly abundant in certain human tissues were likewise abundant in according rat tissues. We implemented a web-based repository enabling scientists to access and browse the data (https://ccb-web.cs.uni-saarland.de/tissueatlas).
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human Genetics, Saarland University, Medical School, Homburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ludwig
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human Genetics, Saarland University, Medical School, Homburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Petra
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Leidinger
authors.affiliation: Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Saarland University, Medical School, Homburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Kurt
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.affiliation: Chair for Clinical Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Backes
authors.affiliation: Chair for Clinical Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany.
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fehlmann
authors.affiliation: Department I of Internal Medicine and Center of Integrated Oncology, University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany Cologne Excellence Cluster on Cellular Stress Responses in Aging-Associated Diseases (CECAD), Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pallasch
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human Genetics, Saarland University, Medical School, Homburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Steffi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rheinheimer
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine III, University Hospital Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany Klaus Tschira Institute for Integrative Computational Cardiology, D-69118 Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Meder
authors.affiliation: Siemens Healthcare, Hartmannstrasse 16, 91052 Erlangen, Germany.
authors.forename: Cord
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stähler
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human Genetics, Saarland University, Medical School, Homburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Eckart
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Meese
authors.affiliation: Chair for Clinical Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany andreas.keller@ccb.uni-saarland.de.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Keller
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000818:Animals; D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000145:classification / Q000378:metabolism*; D009928:Organ Specificity; D051381:Rats; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014018:Tissue Distribution
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs