Figure 1.
Neat1 was upregulated in mice with liver fibrosis and targeted both miR-148a-3p and miR-22-3p. (a) The expression profile of microRNAs in liver tissues from 3 pairs of CCl4-induced mice and normal mice was analyzed. The top 10 differentially expressed miRNAs are depicted in a heatmap, and the threshold value was set to P< 0.05 and a fold change value >2. (b) The expression levels of miR-148a-3p and miR-22-3p were downregulated to the greatest extent among the top 10 differentially expressed miRNAs analyzed using qPCR. *P< 0.05, **P< 0.01 compared to the Control group. (c) Four lncRNAs (1700020I14Rik, Tug1, Neat1, and Xist) were targets of both miR-148a-3p and miR-22-3p according to the ENCORI database. (d) The expression level of Neat1 was upregulated to the greatest extent in CCl4-induced mice. N = 6; *P< 0.05, **P< 0.01 compared to Control group. (e) Prediction of binding sites in the Mus musculus Neat1 3ʹUTR and Homo sapiens Neat1 3ʹUTR for miR-148a-3p or miR-22-3p. (f-g) The targeting relationship between Neat1 and miR-148a-3p (f) or miR-22-3p (g) was verified by performing luciferase reporter assay in HSCs. N = 3; **P< 0.01 compared to mimics NC group; ##P< 0.01 compared to inhibitor NC group