《Original Article》.pdfVIP

Int J Clin Exp Pathol 2015;8(10):12811-12819 /ISSN:1936-2625/IJCEP0014955 Original Article Identification and functional analysis of microRNA in myometrium tissue from spontaneous preterm labor 1,2* 1,2* 1 1 1,2 1 Yao Tang , Hongjing Ji , Haiyan Liu , Weirong Gu , Xiaotian Li , Ting Peng 1The Department of Obstetrics, Shanghai Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai, China; 2Shanghai Key Laboratory of Female Reproductive Endocrine Related Diseases, Shanghai, China. *Equal contributors. Received August 23, 2015; Accepted September 25, 2015; Epub October 1, 2015; Published October 15, 2015 Abstract: Spontaneous preterm labor is an important complication in perinatology characterized by early onset myometrium contractions leading to labor at preterm. However, the exact mechanism that maintain uterine quies- cence and promote increased uterine contractility during labor were incompletely defined. MicroRNAs is a class of short non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level by binding the 3’ untranslated region of target mRNAs and play an important role in biological process and cellular functions. We hypothesized we could find differentially expressed microRNAs in the myometrium of women in spontaneous preterm labor. Thus, a microarray analysis of miRNAs of preterm myometrium was performed. 18 out of the 2006 detected microR- NAs were found to be significantly dysregulated in myometrium in labor verse not in labor at preterm. Biological validation by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction confirms us a consistence rate of 83.3% (5 out of 6) with microarray analysis. The target genes for validated microRNAs were predicted by three algorithms (PicTar, TargetScan, and miRanda). Most of the potential targets of the miRNAs were relevant to positive regulation of car-