Author(s)

Jia Yang¹, Yuan Liu², Ling Wang², Zhenyin Yu², Cheng Wang², Yun Zheng³, Yang Liu^2*

¹The Second Clinical Medical College of Yangtze University/The Department of Radiology, Jingzhou Central Hospital, Jingzhou, China.
²Department of Pathogenic Biology, School of Medicine, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China.
³Department of Medical Function, School of Medicine, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China.

Purpose: To analyze the miRNA expression profiles in C57 mice ageing hippocampus in detail, and investigate the functional information of these hippocampus specific miRNAs and the related regulatory networks. Methods: Microarrays were used to analyze miRNA expression profiles in adult and aged hippocampi, and bioinformatics analysis methods, such as three public datasets (Mirbase, Miranda, and Mirdb), DAVID online tools and KEGG pathway tools were used to study in detail the target genes of the differentially expressed miRNAs. Results: 26 differentially expressed miRNAs were identified by greater than 1.5-fold change (intersection of two sets), of which 16 were up-regulated and 10 were down-regulated. DAVID Functional Annotation Cluster (FAC) analysis of the 132 predicted target genes of up-regulated miRNAs revealed confident enrichment scores for synaptic function and apoptosis etc. (Figure 1), indicating the functional significance and importance of these miRNAs during hippocampal ageing. Conclusions: Bioinformatic analyses of the differentially expressed miRNAs have identified a number of miRNAs with putative involvement in the hippocampus ageing process. This study lays a solid foundation for further studies to clarify the important regulation function of miRNAs in ageing process of brain tissue.

microRNA, Microarray, Hippocampus, Ageing

Yang, J. , Liu, Y. , Wang, L. , Yu, Z. , Wang, C. , Zheng, Y. and Liu, Y. (2017) Microarray Analysis of microRNAs Expression Profiles in Adult and Aged Mice Hippocampus. Yangtze Medicine, 1, 216-234. doi: 10.4236/ym.2017.14022.