A Data-Mining Approach to Identify NF-kB-Responsive microRNAs in Tissues Involved in Inflammatory Processes: Potential Relevance in Age-Related Diseases

Abstract

The nuclear factor NF-kB is the master transcription factor in the inflammatory process by modulating the expression of pro-inflammatory genes. However, an additional level of complexity is the ability to promote the transcriptional activation of post-transcriptional modulators of gene expression as non-coding RNA (i.e., miRNAs). While NF-kB’s role in inflammation-associated gene expression has been extensively investigated, the interplay between NF-kB and genes coding for miRNAs still deserves investigation. To identify miRNAs with potential NF-kB binding sites in their transcription start site, we predicted miRNA promoters by an in silico analysis using the PROmiRNA software, which allowed us to score the genomic region’s propensity to be miRNA cis-regulatory elements. A list of 722 human miRNAs was generated, of which 399 were expressed in at least one tissue involved in the inflammatory processes. The selection of “high-confidence” hairpins in miRbase identified 68 mature miRNAs, most of them previously identified as inflammamiRs. The identification of targeted pathways/diseases highlighted their involvement in the most common age-related diseases. Overall, our results reinforce the hypothesis that persistent activation of NF-kB could unbalance the transcription of specific inflammamiRNAs. The identification of such miRNAs could be of diagnostic/prognostic/therapeutic relevance for the most common inflammatory-related and age-related diseases.