Differential baseline expression and angiotensin II-stimulation of leukemia-associated RhoGEF in vascular smooth muscle cells of spontaneously hypertensive rats

Apatinib Through Activating the RhoA/ROCK Signaling Pathway to Cause Dysfunction of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are associated with differentiated, organized, and contractile phenotype under the effect of various types of physiological conditions those are associated with migratory, proliferative, and synthetic phenotype under the effect of various types of stimuli, which dysfunction drives many cardiovascular diseases. Abnormal cell proliferation and invasion of VSMCs are among the primary causes of hypertension. Apatinib is a small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) that highly selectively binds to and strongly inhibits VEGFR-2. Previous studies have confirmed that the TKIs can raise blood pressure through RhoA/ROCK pathway. LARG is a key gene in the RhoA/ROCK pathway and plays a critical role in the continuous vasoconstriction function because it regulates part of signal transduction in VSMCs. In this study, an in vitro experiment was conducted to observe that apatinib caused dysfunction of MOVAS cells through the RhoA/ROCK signalling pathway and Y27632, a nonspecific ROCK inhibitor, and knockout of LARG gene can improve the proliferation, antiapoptosis, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial autophagy of apatinib-induced MOVAS cells. These findings suggest that activation of the RhoA/ROCK signalling pathway could be the underlying mechanism of apatinib-induced dysfunction of MOVAS cells, while ROCK inhibitor and knockout of LARG gene have potential therapeutic value.

Messenger RNA and MicroRNA transcriptomic signatures of cardiometabolic risk factors

Background

Cardiometabolic (CM) risk factors are heritable and cluster in individuals. We hypothesized that CM risk factors are associated with multiple shared and unique mRNA and microRNA (miRNA) signatures. We examined associations of mRNA and miRNA levels with 6 CM traits: body mass index, HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides, fasting glucose, and systolic and diastolic blood pressures through cross-sectional analysis of 2812 Framingham Heart Study who had whole blood collection for RNA isolation for mRNA and miRNA expression studies and who consented to genetic research. We excluded participants taking medication for hypertension, dyslipidemia, or diabetes. We measured mRNA (n = 17,318; using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Exon 1.0 ST Array) and miRNA (n = 315; using qRT-PCR) expression in whole blood. We used linear regression for mRNA analyses and a combination of linear and logistic regression for miRNA analyses. We conducted miRNA-mRNA coexpression and gene ontology enrichment analyses to explore relations between pleiotropic miRNAs, mRNA expression, and CM trait clustering.

Results

We identified hundreds of significant associations between mRNAs, miRNAs, and individual CM traits. Four mRNAs (FAM13A, CSF2RB, HIST1H2AC, WNK1) were associated with all 6 CM traits (FDR < 0.001) and four miRNAs (miR-197-3p, miR-328, miR-505-5p, miR-145-5p) were associated with four CM traits (FDR < 0.05). Twelve mRNAs, including WNK1, that were coexpressed with the four most pleiotropic miRNAs, were also miRNA targets. mRNAs coexpressed with pleiotropic miRNAs were enriched for RNA metabolism (miR-505-5p), ubiquitin-dependent protein catabolism (miR-197-3p, miR-328) and chromatin assembly (miR-328).

Conclusions

We identified mRNA and miRNA signatures of individual CM traits and their clustering. Implicated transcripts may play causal roles in CM risk or be downstream consequences of CM risk factors on the transcriptome. Studies are needed to establish whether or not pleiotropic circulating transcripts illuminate causal pathways for CM risk.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-017-3533-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Genome-wide transcriptional analysis of silica nanoparticle-induced toxicity in zebrafish embryos

Although silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) have a promising application in biomedical fields, there is still a lack of comprehensive understanding of genome-wide transcriptional analysis. This study aims to clarify the toxic effect and molecular mechanisms of SiNPs in zebrafish embryos based on microarray analysis and bioinformatics analysis. Microarray data analysis demonstrated that SiNP-induced toxicity in zebrafish embryos affected expression of 2515 genes, including 1107 genes that were up-regulated and 1408 genes that were down-regulated. These differentially expressed genes were subjected to bioinformatics analysis for exploring the biological processes triggered by SiNPs in zebrafish embryos. Gene ontology analysis showed that SiNPs caused significant changes in gene expression patterns related to many important functions, including response to stimuli, immune response, cellular processes, and embryonic development. In addition, pathway analysis and Signal-net analysis indicated that the gap junction, vascular smooth muscle contraction, and metabolic pathways, apoptosis, the MAPK signaling pathway, the calcium signaling pathway and the JAK-STAT signaling pathway were the most prominent significant pathways in SiNP-induced toxicity in zebrafish embryos. In addition, the results from qRT-PCR and western blot analysis showed that the IL-6 dependent JAK1/STAT3 signaling pathway was activated by SiNPs in zebrafish embryos. In summary, our data will provide compelling clues for further exploration of SiNP-induced toxicity in zebrafish embryos.