Coronary artery disease: differential expression of ceRNAs and interaction analyses

New insights into the effects of PFOS exposure on rat lung development: morphological, functional, and single-cell sequencing analysis

Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), a widely persistent environmental pollutant, has been demonstrated to disrupt lung development in animal models. However, its cellular and molecular mechanisms remain insufficiently understood. This study examines the effects of prenatal PFOS exposure on lung development and function in offspring rats. Pregnant rats were exposed to PFOS at concentrations relevant to both environmental and occupational exposures, with doses of 0, 0.01, 0.1, and 1 mg/kg/day from gestational day 11-20. We primarily evaluated morphological changes, pulmonary function, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid composition, and alterations in trace element and fatty acid metabolism at postnatal days 0, 4, 14, 21, and 60. Single-cell RNA sequencing was employed to profile cellular and molecular responses in the lungs. Our results show that PFOS exposure leads to dose-dependent reductions in alveolar development, increased pulmonary injury, fibrosis, and impaired lung function. PFOS also changes lung cell composition, particularly affecting structural and immune cells, and shifts immune responses from innate to adaptive immunity. Differential gene expression analyses revealed the upregulation of Fam111a and downregulation of Stk35, implicating these genes in PFOS-induced lung injury and repair processes. In addition, pathway analyses demonstrated suppression of immune-related signaling pathways and disruption of cell adhesion and phagocytosis, which may exacerbate lung tissue injury. These findings provide novel insights into the developmental toxicity of PFOS and highlight its potential long-term health risks.

Role of LncRNAs in the Pathogenesis of Coronary Artery Disease

Coronary artery disease (CAD), caused by coronary artery occlusion, is a common cardiovascular disease worldwide. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are implicated in the regulation of endothelial cell injury, angiogenesis, plaque formation, and other pathological mechanisms in CAD by acting on different cell types. Some lncRNAs are significantly upregulated in CAD patients; however, other lncRNAs are significantly downregulated. Differential expression of lncRNAs in CAD patients enables them to be exploited as potential biomarkers to evaluate disease progression and diagnosis/prognosis in CAD patients. In this study, we reviewed the role of lncRNAs in the development of different clinical subtypes of CAD.

lncRNA Mirt1: A Critical Regulatory Factor in Chronic Intermittent Hypoxia Exaggerated Post-MI Cardiac Remodeling

Chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) is the main feature of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and is known to exaggerate cardiac remodeling after myocardial infarction (MI). However, the specific contribution of CIH to overall OSA-induced pathological complications and the transcriptomic mechanisms underlying CIH-exaggerated post-MI remodeling remains unclear. In this study, we used RNA-sequencing to construct the expression profiles of cardiac mRNAs, microRNAs, and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) in four groups of C57BL/6J mice (Sham, CIH, MI, MI + CIH) to evaluate how CIH regulates cardiac remodeling after MI. Compared with the other three groups, the MI + CIH group exhibited 345 lncRNAs, 35 microRNAs, and 5,220 differentially expressed mRNAs. Further analysis showed that CIH led to significant changes in Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway of the differentially expressed mRNAs. Co-expression network analysis identified two core lncRNAs (Mirt1 and AC125351.1) and two core microRNAs (miR-466i-5p and miR-574-5p) during the development of CIH-exaggerated post-MI remodeling, and they were verified by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). LncRNA-mRNA correlation analysis further showed that lncRNA Mirt1 was positively correlated with Apbb1ip and Lcp2. In addition, microRNA-mRNA correlation analysis showed that microRNA miR-466i-5p was positively correlated with Snai2, Cdc27, and Ngfr. Furthermore, combining with lncRNA-mRNA and miRNA-mRNA networks, 44 RNAs were identified in the competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network. Mirt1 acts as a ceRNA to bind to miR-466i-5p to further regulate the expression levels of the target gene, thereby aggravating cardiac remodeling after MI. In conclusion, our study provides a systematic perspective on the potential functions of mRNAs, microRNAs, and lncRNAs in CIH-exaggerated post-MI cardiac remodeling. Our data suggest that lncRNA Mirt1 may be the most critical regulator of MI aggravated by CIH.

Construction of the gene expression subgroups of patients with coronary artery disease through bioinformatics approach

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a heterogeneous disease that has placed a heavy burden on public health due to its considerable morbidity, mortality and high costs. Better understanding of the genetic drivers and gene expression clustering behind CAD will be helpful for the development of genetic diagnosis of CAD patients. The transcriptome of 352 CAD patients and 263 normal controls were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. We performed a modified unsupervised machine learning algorithm to group CAD patients. The relationship between gene modules obtained through weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) and clinical features was identified by the Pearson correlation analysis. The annotation of gene modules and subgroups was done by the gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis. Three gene expression subgroups with the clustering score of greater than 0.75 were constructed. Subgroup I may experience coronary artery disease of an in-creased severity, while subgroup III is milder. Subgroup I was found to be closely related to the upregulation of the mitochondrial autophagy pathway, whereas the genes of subgroup II were shown to be related to the upregulation of the ribosome pathway. The high expression of APOE, NOS1 and NOS3 in the subgroup I suggested that the patients had more severe coronary artery disease. The construction of genetic subgroups of CAD patients has enabled clinicians to improve their understanding of CAD pathogenesis and provides potential tools for disease diagnosis, classification and assessment of prognosis.

Role of competitive endogenous RNA networks in the pathogenesis of coronary artery disease

Background

The present study aimed to construct a network of competitive endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) related to the pathogenesis of coronary artery disease (CAD), to provide a novel rationale for CAD treatment.

Methods

Bioinformatics methods were applied to screen for differentially expressed long non-coding RNAs (DElncRNAs), microRNAs (DEmiRNAs), and mRNAs (DEmRNAs) from the GSE68506, GSE59421, and GSE20129 datasets of the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The miRcode database was used to predict lncRNA-binding miRNAs. The miRTarBase, miRDB, and TargetScan databases were used to predict the target genes of these miRNAs. An mRNA-miRNA-lncRNA ceRNA network of CAD was established.

Results

Between the CAD and normal control groups there were 264 DElncRNAs, 106 DEmiRNAs, and 1,879 DEmRNAs. We screened these differentially expressed gens (DEGs) respectively. There were 21 DElncRNAs, 13 DEmiRNAs, and 143 DEmRNAs in the ceRNA network by using Cytoscape application. The DEmRNAs were involved in the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway and the NF-κB signaling pathway. The key genes in the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network were HSP90AA1, CDKN1A, MCL1, MDM2, MAPK1, ABL1, LYN, CRK, CDK9, and FAS.

Conclusions

The ceRNA network constructed in this study identified new candidate molecules for the treatment of CAD, providing some more comprehensive and higher-quality choices for the target treatment of CAD.