Figure 1: The miR-379 miRNA megacluster is increased in the glomeruli of diabetic mice. | Nature Communications

Figure 1: The miR-379 miRNA megacluster is increased in the glomeruli of diabetic mice.

From: An endoplasmic reticulum stress-regulated lncRNA hosting a microRNA megacluster induces early features of diabetic nephropathy

Figure 1

Small RNA (smRNA) sequencing was performed as previously described22. (a) Scatter plot of miRNAs in kidney glomeruli from control (CTR, vehicle injected) and diabetic mice (STZ injected; 4 weeks post diabetes). The expression of each detectable miRNA in the form of log scaled reads was plotted with x axis for CTR and y axis for STZ. Each dot represents one miRNA. miRNAs in the miR-379 cluster were presented in red. Among these, the miRNAs upregulated by fold change ≥2 are highlighted with bigger size dots and labelled with the corresponding miRNA names. miR-882 was plotted in blue as a negative control (outside the miR-379 cluster). (b) Heatmap of the miR-379 cluster miRNAs in CTR and STZ samples. The expression of each detectable miRNA within the miR-379 cluster in the two samples (CTR and STZ) were ordered by log2 fold change from low to high, mean-centered and shown in the heatmap. Blue represents lower than average expression in the two samples and yellow presents higher than average expression level. The expression of the detected miRNAs in this cluster was higher in STZ than CTR. (c) Genome structure of the mouse miR-379 megacluster region. This cluster is located within the largest miRNA cluster currently identified in the genome. It maps within the DLK-DIO3 genomic region (mouse chr 12, human chr14), which is home to several miRNAs and lncRNAs. TSS, transcription start site. miR-882 is located far-upstream of the miR-379 cluster and not covered by lnc-MGC. (d) Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA). All the miRNAs detected by smRNA-seq with at least 5 scaled reads in at least one sample are ranked by log2 fold change between STZ and CTR samples to generate ranked list and all the detectable miRNAs in the cluster are considered as a gene set. Pre-ranked gene set analysis (GSEA) applied on the gene set using the ranked list of all the miRNAs revealed that miRNAs in the miR-379 cluster were significantly enriched within the miRNAs upregulated in the STZ diabetic mice, with normalized enrichment score of 1.56 (P=0.004).

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