Analyses of circRNA and mRNA Profiles in Vogt–Koyanagi–Harada Disease

Abstract

Recent studies revealed that circular RNAs (circRNAs) are important in numerous biological process and involved in autoimmune diseases. However, their role in Vogt–Koyanagi–Harada (VKH) disease, a classical autoimmune disease, is not yet known. This research aimed to study the expression profile of mRNAs, microRNAs (miRNAs) and circRNAs and investigate the influence of circRNAs on the pathogenesis of VKH disease. We identified circRNAs, miRNAs, and mRNAs expression profiles in CD4+ T cells between 4 VKH patients and 3 healthy controls using the whole-transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) technique. We discovered that a total of 5088 mRNAs, 451 circRNAs and 433 miRNAs were differently expressed. The GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses were performed for significantly differentially expressed circRNAs and mRNAs. GSEA was conducted for all mRNAs. The functional enrichment suggested that the inflammatory response, the adaptive immune response, NF-kappa B signaling pathway, Th17 cell differentiation, Th1 and Th2 cell differentiation and T cell receptor signaling pathway were associated with VKH disease. In addition, based on the immune-related genes we screened, the circRNA-miRNA-mRNA ceRNA network was analyzed and constructed. Ten differently expressed mRNAs (LAT, ZAP70, ITK, ICOS, RASGRP1, PAG1, PLCG1, PRKCQ, LCK, CARD11) and 5 differently expressed circRNAs (hsa_circ_0033144, hsa_circ_0000233, hsa_circ_0000396, hsa_circ_0001924, hsa_circ_0001320) were selected to be validated by Real-time qPCR (RT-qPCR). The results of RT-qPCR turned out to be consistent with RNA-seq data. Further analysis showed that hsa_circ_0001320 and hsa_circ_0001924 may serve as crucial candidate marker genes of VKH disease. These results reveal that circRNAs may have a crucial immunomodulatory function in the pathophysiological process of VKH disease.

Analysis of circRNA expression in chicken HD11 cells in response to avian pathogenic E.coli

“…Recently, numerous studies have shown that the ceRNA networks regulation, that is the interaction among circRNAs, miRNAs, and mRNAs, was identified to widely exist in various diseases in different species (64)(65)(66). To investigate the ceRNA network and the functions of circRNAs against APEC infection in chicken macrophages, a putative circRNA-miRNA-mRNA network was constructed in current study.…”

Identification of immune hub genes participating in the pathogenesis and progression of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease

“…Another research purified the CD4+ T cells from PBMCs and extracted total RNA of CD4+ T cells. RNA-seq was conducted, revealing that circular RNAs (cicRNAs) may have an important immunomodulatory function in the development of VKH disease ( 25 ). As the existing researches have revealed the crucial role of immune cells and molecules in the development of VKH disease, our research group innovatively intersected the screened DEGs between VKH patients and healthy controls with the immune dataset and finally found out six immune hub genes in VKH disease, furtherly providing a new insight into the pathogenesis and treatment of this disease.…”

Comparative Analysis of Serum microRNA in Diagnosed Ocular Sarcoidosis versus Idiopathic Uveitis with Ocular Manifestations of Sarcoidosis

“…MiRNAs are small noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level [13]. Several investigators have reported on the feasibility of using miRNAs as biomarkers for the diagnosis of non-infectious uveitis, and miRNAs may also advance our understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms involved in these diseases [14][15][16][17].…”