Abstract
BackgroundAcute kidney injury (AKI) is a life-threatening complication characterized by rapid decline in renal function, which frequently occurs after transplantation surgery. However, the molecular mechanism underlying the development of post-transplant (post-Tx) AKI still remains unknown. An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that certain microRNAs (miRNAs) exert crucial functions in AKI. The present study sought to elucidate the molecular mechanisms in post-Tx AKI by constructing a regulatory miRNA–mRNA network.ResultsBased on two datasets (GSE53771 and GSE53769), three key modules, which contained 55 mRNAs, 76 mRNAs, and 151 miRNAs, were identified by performing weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). The miRDIP v4.1 was applied to predict the interactions of key module mRNAs and miRNAs, and the miRNA–mRNA pairs with confidence of more than 0.2 were selected to construct a regulatory miRNA–mRNA network by Cytoscape. The miRNA–mRNA network consisted of 82 nodes (48 mRNAs and 34 miRNAs) and 125 edges. Two miRNAs (miR-203a-3p and miR-205-5p) and ERBB4 with higher node degrees compared with other nodes might play a central role in post-Tx AKI. Additionally, Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis indicated that this network was mainly involved in kidney-/renal-related functions and PI3K–Akt/HIF-1/Ras/MAPK signaling pathways.ConclusionWe constructed a regulatory miRNA–mRNA network to provide novel insights into post-Tx AKI development, which might help discover new biomarkers or therapeutic drugs for enhancing the ability for early prediction and intervention and decreasing mortality rate of AKI after transplantation.
Highlights
Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a life-threatening complication characterized by rapid decline in renal func‐ tion, which frequently occurs after transplantation surgery
Identification of key modules related to post‐Tx AKI based on GSE53769 dataset According to Pearson’s correlation and average linkage algorithms, 36 samples were clustered and the sample dendrogram and trait heatmap are depicted in Fig. 1a; we found that GSM1300317 was clustered alone and might be a potential outlier
As shown in Additional file 2: Figure S2, there was no obvious outlier after the dimension reduction, and we proceeded with the weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA)
Summary
Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a life-threatening complication characterized by rapid decline in renal func‐ tion, which frequently occurs after transplantation surgery. An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that certain microRNAs (miRNAs) exert crucial functions in AKI. The present study sought to elucidate the molecular mechanisms in post-Tx AKI by constructing a regulatory miRNA–mRNA network. As a type of clinical critical illness with rapid loss of renal function and high mortality, acute kidney injury (AKI) commonly occurs in transplant recipients, which might result in transplant failure and death [1]. Recent studies have found that the changes in the expression of mRNA and miRNA would affect proliferation and apoptosis of renal cells, which are related to the occurrence and development of AKI [11, 12]. There are few data published on the potential network of mRNA and miRNA in AKI following transplantation
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