Changing expression profiles of mRNA, miRNA, lncRNA, and circRNA reveal the key regulators and interaction networks of ceRNA in pulmonary fibrosis [miRNA-seq]
Pulmonary fibrosis is a kind of interstitial lung disease with architectural remodeling of tissues and excessive matrix deposition. Apart from mRNA, microRNA, long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) and circular RNA (circRNA) could also play important roles in the regulatory processes of occurrence and progression of pulmonary fibrosis. In the present study, whole transcriptome sequencing analysis was applied to investigate the expression profiles of mRNAs, lncRNAs, circRNAs and miRNAs. After comparing bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis model lung samples and controls, 286 lncRNAs, 192 mRNAs, 605 circRNAs, and 32 miRNAs were found to be differentially expressed. Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses were performed to investigate the potential functions of these DE mRNAs and ncRNAs. Various related GO-BP terms such as “inflammatory response”, “positive regulation of interleukin-2 biosynthetic process”, “Regulation of actin cytoskeleton”, “Notch signaling pathway”, “negative regulation of cellular response to vascular endothelial growth factor stimulus”, and KEGG signal pathways such as “Wnt signaling pathway”, “TNF signaling pathway”, “MAPK signaling pathway”, “Regulation of actin cytoskeleton” were enriched implying potential roles in regulatory process. In addition, two co-expression networks (lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA, circRNA-miRNA-mRNA) were also constructed to understand the internal regulating relationships of these mRNAs and ncRNAs. Our study provides a systematic perspective on the potential functions of these DE mRNAs and ncRNAs during PF process, and could help pave the way for effective therapeutics for this devastating and complex disease. Overall design: Six samples, 3 bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis model and 3 controls.