title: MiR-122 targets the vanin 1 gene to regulate its expression in chickens.
abstract: As the most abundant microRNA (miRNA) in the liver, miR-122 plays important roles in the growth and development of liver, lipid metabolism, and liver diseases. Vanin 1 (VNN1) plays an important role in hepatic lipid metabolism, and VNN1 may serve as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of metabolic diseases caused by overactivated gluconeogenesis. In our previous RNA-seq study, we found the expression of VNN1 increased significantly when the expression of miR-122 (gga-miR-122-5p) was knocked down in primary chicken hepatocytes. In this study, we verified this result by real-time qRT-PCR, and we also found that the chicken VNN1 was highly expressed in the liver. By bioinformatics analyses, we found the 3'UTR of VNN1 contained sequences completely complementary to the nucleotides 1 to 8 of miR-122. Co-transfection and dual-luciferase reporter assays showed that overexpression of miR-122 decreased the expression of luciferase reporter gene linked to the 3'UTR of chicken VNN1 in the Chinese hamster ovary cells (P<0.01), and the decrease was further demonstrated to be dependent on the predicted miR-122 binding sites by site mutation analyses. These results further support miR-122 as a negative regulator of VNN1 expression in chicken hepatocytes. Overall, this study suggests that miR-122 might play an important role in lipid metabolism in the chicken liver by negatively regulating the expression of the VNN1 gene.
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Science and Technology, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, Jiangsu, 215500, China.
authors.forename: Yanyan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Science and Technology, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, Jiangsu, 215500, China Jiangsu Institute of Poultry Science, Yangzhou, Jiangsu 225125, China.
authors.forename: Xingguo
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Science and Technology, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, Jiangsu, 215500, China.
authors.forename: Jianfeng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Science and Technology, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, Jiangsu, 215500, China Department of Oncology, the Affiliated Changzhou No.2 People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Changzhou 213003, China.
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Shao
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Science and Technology, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, Jiangsu, 215500, China.
authors.forename: Yanping
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Science and Technology, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, Jiangsu, 215500, China.
authors.forename: Xiangyun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Science and Technology, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, Jiangsu, 215500, China zhilianggu88@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Zhiliang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Gu
mesh_terms: D000581:Amidohydrolases / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D000818:Animals; D016466:CHO Cells; D002645:Chickens / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D006224:Cricetinae; D003412:Cricetulus; D058851:GPI-Linked Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000502:physiology*; D015971:Gene Expression Regulation, Enzymologic / Q000502:physiology; D008099:Liver / Q000378:metabolism; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D015854:Up-Regulation
chemical_list: D058851:GPI-Linked Proteins; D035683:MicroRNAs; D000581:Amidohydrolases; C022314:pantetheinase
keywords: VNN1; liver metabolism; miR-122; target gene