Exosomal mRNA and lncRNA profiles in cord blood of preeclampsia patients

Abstract

Background

Exosomes are endosome-derived membrane vesicles that contain numerous RNAs and allow intercellular communication. The roles of mRNAs and lncRNAs from umbilical cord blood exosomes in the development of preeclampsia (PE) remain unclear.

Methods

In the study, microarray technology was used to construct the differential mRNA and lncRNA expression profiles in umbilical cord blood exosomes between PE patients and normal controls.

Results

Totally, 120 differentially expressed mRNAs and 248 differentially expressed lncRNAs were identified. Pathway analysis showed that the differentially expressed mRNAs were related to glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway and JAK-STAT signaling pathway, which are critical in PE development. Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses were conducted for the differential lncRNA-associated mRNAs. We found several significantly enriched pathways were closely associated with metabolic process, cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. Moreover, the constructed pathway network revealed key pathways in PE, including apoptosis and TGF-beta signaling pathway. Further analysis of lncRNA/miRNA interactions showed that most of the lncRNAs had miRNA binding sites, and some of them were associated with PE.

Conclusions

The study highlights the importance of exosomal mRNAs and lncRNAs in umbilical cord blood, and provides new insight into the development of PE.

Keywords:

• Umbilical cord blood
• exosomes
• mRNA
• lncRNA
• preeclampsia

Ethical standards

The study was approved by the ethics committee of Nanjing Maternity and Child Health Care Hospital, and written informed consents were obtained from all participants.

Authors’ contributions

LH conceived and designed the idea, did data collection, wrote and drafted the manuscript. JM, MC and YL did data collection. WL performed the data analysis. ZS and JW designed, contributed to the reviewing of the final manuscript. All authors approved the final format of the submitted manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The microarray data have been uploaded to GEO repository with accession number of GSE166846.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Jiangsu Provincial Key Research and Development Program [BE2020626], Wuxi Maternal and Child Health Research Project [FYKY201807], Six Talent Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province [WSN-121, YY-112], Jiangsu Maternal and Child Health Research Project [F202052], Open Project of Biological Resources Sample Bank of Major Diseases in Jiangsu Province in 2020 [SBK202007002], National Natural Science Foundation of China [81971410, 81571458], Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu [BK20191124], and National Key Research and Development Program of China [2016YFC1000300].