Bioinformatics identification of miRNAs associated to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Introduction: ALS is the most common disease of the upper and lower motor neurons. Given the potential of miRNAs as molecular biomarkers, the aim of this study was to identify miRNAs targeting key pathways of ALS that have a potential of early detection in the blood of ALS patients.Methods: In this study, genes related to ALS were collected from PubMed database articles. Genes with expression changes with P-value less than 0.05 in microarray data analysis in the GEO datasets on peripheral nervous tissue and blood of ALS patients were selected for the next phase. Enrichment of the biological pathways of these genes was performed using Enrich R tool. We then selected the common pathway between the two tissues, and finally, using advanced search of the MiRTarbase database from the common pathway, we obtained validated miRNAs for these pathways. Finally, tissue expression of these miRNAs was assessed using miRmine bioinformatics database.Results: After comparing the data of the nervous system and peripheral blood of ALS patients, we found a common biological pathway of oxidative phosphorylation. Finally, using the MiRTarbase database a set of hsa-miR-1-3p, hsa-miR-124-3p, hsa-miR-101-3p, and hsa-miR-155-5p, interacting directly with the gene of the specified pathway were obtained and the resulting network was analyzed and visualized with Cytoscape 3.6.1.Conclusion: Access to cerebrospinal fluid is only possible through Lumbar Puncture and is an invasive method, therefore, following an easy access alternative tissue containing the miRNAs involved, in this study peripheral blood, miRNAs similar to nerve tissue have been found and are potential to be targeted to the patient's nerve tissue to aid in the early detection of ALS.

کلیدواژه ها:

miRNA ، biomarker ، Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis ، oxidative phosphorylation