The Expression of miRNA-146a in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells of Patients with Myasthenia Gravis and Its Bioinformatics Analysis

Abstract

The study is to investigate the expression of miRNA-146a in PBMC of myasthenia Gravis (MG), and to explore the molecular regulatory network of miRNA-146a in the pathogenesis of MG by bioinformatics. 108 patients with MG were selected as the experimental group (MG group), and 50 healthy subjects were selected as the control group. The relative expression of miRNA-146a in PBMC was detected by RT-PCR. The cross-target gene of miRNA-146a was predicted by TargetScan and CoMeTa database. miRNA-146a target gene GO enrichment and KEGG Pathway enrichment analysis was performed using the DAVID database. Our results shows that the expression level of miRNA-146a in peripheral blood of MG patients was significantly higher than that of the control group, the difference was statistically significant (P < 0 05), and the nucleotide sequence was highly conserved. The potential target genes of miRNA-146a include 88 kinds; GO analysis showed that miRNA-146a target gene function is mainly enriched in cell proliferation regulation, neuronal differentiation, etc. KEGG Pathway analysis shows that miRNA-146a is mainly enriched in Toll-like receptor signaling pathway, neurotransmitter regulatory signaling pathways, EB signaling pathways and other signaling pathways. In conclusion, the expression of miRNA-146a in PBMC of MG patients is up-regulated and participates in the pathogenesis of MG by acting on multiple signaling pathways.