Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 28, 2016; 22(20): 4881-4890
Published online May 28, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i20.4881
miR-29a up-regulation in AR42J cells contributes to apoptosis via targeting TNFRSF1A gene
Qiang Fu, Tao Qin, Lin Chen, Chuan-Jiang Liu, Xu Zhang, Yu-Zhu Wang, Ming-Xing Hu, Hao-Yuan Chu, Hong-Wei Zhang
Qiang Fu, Tao Qin, Lin Chen, Chuan-Jiang Liu, Xu Zhang, Yu-Zhu Wang, Ming-Xing Hu, Hao-Yuan Chu, Hong-Wei Zhang, Department of Hepatobiliary Pancreatic Surgery, People’s Hospital of Zhengzhou University, School of Medicine, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450003, Henan Province, China
Author contributions: Fu Q and Chen L performed the majority of experiments; Qin T and Zhang HW designed the research and provided financial support for this work; Liu CJ conducted the experimental analysis; Wang YZ and Hu MX provided vital reagents and were involved in editing the manuscript; Zhang X and Chu HY analyzed sequencing data and developed analysis tools; Fu Q, Qin T and Chen L wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of People’s Hospital of Zhengzhou University.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All procedures involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of People’s Hospital of Zhengzhou University.
Conflict-of-interest statement: We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, and there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any products, service and/ or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled “miR-29a up-regulation in the AR42J cells contributes to apoptosis via targeting the TNFRSF1A gene”.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Hong-Wei Zhang, MD, PhD, Professor, Chief, Department of Hepatobiliary Pancreatic Surgery, People’s Hospital of Zhengzhou University, School of Medicine, Zhengzhou University, No. 7 Weiwu Road, Zhengzhou 450003, Henan Province, China. hwzhang666@126.com
Telephone: +86-371-65580368 Fax: +86-371-65580368
Received: January 8, 2016
Peer-review started: January 9, 2016
First decision: February 18, 2016
Revised: February 29, 2016
Accepted: March 18, 2016
Article in press: March 18, 2016
Published online: May 28, 2016
Processing time: 131 Days and 21.8 Hours
Abstract

AIM: To investigate the expression of miR-29a in rat acute pancreatitis and its functional role in AR42J cell apoptosis.

METHODS: Twelve SD rats were divided into a control group and an acute edematous pancreatitis (AEP) group randomly. AEP was induced by intraperitoneal injection of L-arginine (150 mg/kg) in the AEP group and equal volume of 0.9% NaCl was injected in the control group. The apoptosis of acinar cells in pancreatic tissue was determined by TUNEL assay. miRNA chip assay was performed to examine the expression of miRNAs in two groups. Besides, to further explore the role of miR-29a in apoptosis in vitro, recombinant rat TNF-α (50 ng/mL) was administered to treat the rat pancreatic acinar cell line AR42J for inducing AR42J cell apoptosis. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was adopted to measure miR-29a expression. Then, miRNA mimic, miRNA antisense oligonucleotide (AMO) and control vector were used to transfect AR42J cells. The expression of miR-29a was confirmed by qRT-PCR and the apoptosis rate of AR42J cells was detected by flow cytometry analysis. Western blot was used to detect the expression of activated caspase3. Moreover, we used bioinformatics software and luciferase assay to test whether TNFRSF1A was the target gene of miR-29a. After transfection, qRT-PCR and Western blot was used to detect the expression of TNFRSF1A in AR42J cells after transfection.

RESULTS: The expression of miR-29a was much higher in the AEP group compared with the control group as displayed by the miRNA chip assay. After inducing apoptosis of AR42J cells in vitro, the expression of miR-29a was significantly increased by 1.49 ± 0.04 times in comparison with the control group. As revealed by qRT-PCR assay, the expression of miR-29a was 2.68 ± 0.56 times higher in the miR-29a mimic group relative to the control vector group, accompanied with an obviously increased acinar cell apoptosis rate (42.83 ± 1.25 vs 24.97 ± 0.15, P < 0.05). Moreover, the expression of miR-29a in the miRNA AMO group was 0.46 ± 0.05 times lower than the control vector group, and the cell apoptosis rate was much lower accordingly (17.27 ± 1.36 vs 24.97 ± 0.15, P < 0.05). The results of bioinformatics software and luciferase assay showed that TNFRSF1A might be a target gene of miR-29a. TNFRSF1A expression was up-regulated in the miR-29a mimic group, while the miR-29a AMO group showed the reverse trend.

CONCLUSION: miR-29a might promote the apoptosis of AR42J cells via up-regulating the expression of its target gene TNFRSF1A.

Keywords: Acute edematous pancreatitis; miR-29a; Apoptosis; AR42J; Target gene; TNFRSF1A

Core tip: Apoptosis is a self-protection mechanism in acute pancreatitis. miRNAs are short non-coding RNAs and play important roles in regulating gene expression in multiple cellular processes, such as apoptosis. Here, our group studied the role of miR-29a in pancreatic acinar cell apoptosis. The pancreatic acinar cells showed a tendency to apoptosis when the expression of miR-29a elevated, while the apoptosis rate exhibited the opposite trend by down-regulating the expression of miR-29a. Moreover, we found TNFRSF1A, which encode TNFR1 protein, was a target gene of miR-29a. Our results demonstrated that miR-29a could promote the apoptosis of pancreatic acinar cells via up-regulating the expression of TNFRSF1A gene in acute pancreatitis.