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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 19|pp 8313—8328

LncRNAs down-regulate Myh1, Casr, and Mis18a expression in the Substantia Nigra of aged male rats

Guoliang Zhang1,2, Yunxiao Kang1, Xu Feng3, Rui Cui2, Qiqing Guo1, Xiaoming Ji1, Yuanxiang Huang4, Yannan Ma1, Shufeng Liu3, Geming Shi1,5,6
  • 1Department of Neurobiology, Hebei Medical University, Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang 050017, China
  • 2Department of Human Anatomy, Hebei Medical University, Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang 050017, China
  • 3Hebei Laboratory Animal Center, Hebei Medical University, Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang 050017, China
  • 4Grade 2015 Eight-year Clinical Medicine Program, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Hebei Medical University, Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang 050017, China
  • 5Neuroscience Research Center, Hebei Medical University, Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang 050017, China
  • 6Hebei Key Laboratory of Forensic Medicine, Department of Forensic Medicine, Hebei Medical University, Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang 050017, China
* Equal contribution
Received: May 24, 2019Accepted: September 21, 2019Published: October 2, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102321

Copyright © 2019 Zhang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

In this study, we used high-throughput RNA sequencing to identify mRNAs, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and circular RNAs (circRNAs) that are differentially expressed in the Substantia Nigra (SN) of aged and young rats. Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analyses were used to perform functional annotation of mRNAs that were either differentially expressed themselves (DEMs), targeted by differentially expressed lncRNAs (DELs), or the parents of differentially expressed circRNAs (DECs). A total of 112 DEMs, 163 DELs, and 98 DECs were found in the SN of aged rats. The down-regulated lncRNA NONRATT010417.2 targeted the down-regulated mRNA Myh1, while the down-regulated lncRNA NONRATT015586.2 and the up-regulated lncRNAs NONRATT000490.2 and NONRATT007029.2 all targeted the down-regulated mRNAs Casr and Mis18a. Western blots and RT-qPCR revealed that Myh1, Casr, and Mis18a protein and mRNA expression were significantly reduced in aged rats compared to young rats. This study improves our understanding of the transcriptional alterations underlying aging-related changes in the SN and provides a foundation for future studies of associated molecular mechanisms.