Extracellular RNA in systemic lupus erythematosus

Abstract

Since the discovery of extracellular RNA (exRNA), it has been shown that exRNAs play a significant role as a transducer in intercellular communication and biomarkers in various diseases. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a kind of autoimmune disease that has protean manifestations. The survival and long-term prognosis of patients with SLE has improved in these 5-10 years, while disease pathogenesis is still not clear. Many researchers found the changes in exRNA profile, and exRNAs are likely participating in the process of SLE. In this review, we summarize the current profile and function of exRNA in SLE. Circulating miRNAs, in particular, have been identified as biomarkers for SLE diagnosis. We also explore the function of lncRNA in SLE and the potential correlation with disease progression and activity. These studies show that exRNAs may take parts in the process of SLE and some of them can be used as diagnostic tool for SLE.

Differential expression of exosomal miRNAs and proteins in the plasma of systemic lupus erythematous patients

“…miR-324, miR-340, miR-362 and miR-27b downregulated in circulating dendritic cells (DCs) in SLE patients [ 15 ]. Previous studies demonstrated that miR-129 [ 6 ], miR-142, and miR-148b [ 6 , 17 ] were overexpressed in circulating macrophages of SLE patients, which was consistent to our plasma exosomal data. One study reported that serum exosomal miR-155 was upregulated in SLE patients [ 5 ], while our data showed that the expression of plasma exosomal miR-155 was higher but not significant in SLE.…”

“…In our study, we found differential expression of 1003 miRNAs and 97 proteins. 39 common miRNAs were recognized in study, such as miRNA-181b was reported to be involved in B cell activation in SLE [ 17 ], and miR-224 [ 15 ] was overexpressed in T cells. miR-324, miR-340, miR-362 and miR-27b downregulated in circulating dendritic cells (DCs) in SLE patients [ 15 ].…”

Application of annotation-agnostic RNA sequencing data analysis tools for biomarker discovery in liquid biopsy

“…Furthermore, when quantifying total RNA, the relative abundances of different RNA species such as mRNA, miRNA and lncRNA did not differ substantially between both strategies, with most reads aligning to miRNA, mRNA or lncRNA, which is typical of extracellular RNA sequencing data (Liu et al, 2019) (Figure 3A). miRNA quantification results from derfinder, ShortStack and srnadiff were also compared to mirDeep2, which is explicitly designed for miRNA analysis.…”

“…These small structures are released from different cell types and contain various biomolecules such as nucleic acids, proteins, and metabolites (Vagner et al, 2018;Pathan et al, 2019). Among the nucleic acids contained within EVs, there is a diversity of RNA types, including messenger RNA (mRNA), microRNA (miRNA), long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), ribosomal RNA (rRNA), piwi-RNA (piRNA), circular RNA (circRNA), transfer RNA (tRNA), small nuclear RNA (snRNA), and small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA) (Perez-Boza et al, 2018;Liu et al, 2019;Turchinovich et al, 2019); however, most RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) studies in the EV field focus on the analysis of miRNA and lncRNA. As a result, this field has relied on methods and tools developed for the analysis of both small RNA sequencing (sRNA-Seq) and standard RNA-Seq.…”

Long Noncoding RNAs and Circular RNAs in Autoimmune Diseases

“…Indeed, a better understanding of the roles of these molecules is emerging as fundamental in the diverse biological processes leading to SLE including alterations of immune cells and key molecular mechanisms [ 92 , 93 ]. Circulating ncRNAs have also been identified as biomarkers for SLE diagnosis, progression, and activity, demonstrating they play important roles in both SLE pathogenesis and as diagnostic tools for SLE [ 94 ].…”