Upregulation of microRNA miR-141-3p and its prospective targets in endometrial carcinoma: a comprehensive study

ABSTRACT

The clinicopathological value of microRNA-141-3p (miR-141-3p) and its prospective target genes in endometrial carcinoma (EC) remains unclear. The present study determined the expression level of miR-141-3p in EC via quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR). RT-qPCR showed a markedly higher expression level of miR-141-3p in EC tissues than in non-EC endometrium tissues (P < 0.0001). The microarray and miRNA-seq data revealed upregulation of miR-141-3p. Integrated analysis based on 675 cases of EC and 63 controls gave a standardized mean difference of 1.737, confirmed the upregulation of miR-141-3p. The Kaplan-Meier survival curve showed that a higher expression of miR-141-3p positively corelated with a poorer prognosis. Combining the predicted targets and downregulated genes in EC, we obtained 271 target genes for miR-141-3p in EC. Two potential targets, PPP1R12A and PPP1R12B, were downregulated at both the mRNA and protein levels. This study indicates that the overexpression of miR-141-3p may play an important part in the carcinogenesis of EC. The overexpression of miR-141-3p may be a risk factor for the prognosis of patients with EC.

Graphical Abstract

KEYWORDS:

• mir-141-3p
• endometrial carcinoma
• RT-qPCR
• microarray
• miRNA-sequencing
• molecular mechanism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), Stata software version 15.1 (TX, USA), Database for Annotation, Visualisation and Integrated Discovery (DAVID), SPSS version 25.0 software (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA), The Human Protein Atlas (THPA), ImageGP online platform and R software.

Authors’ contributions

LJ Yang: project development and manuscript editing.

L Gao: data analysis and tables preparing.

YN Guo: study designing, experiments performing, and data analysis.

ZQ Liang: data analysis, figures and tables preparing, and manuscript writing.

DM Li: data collection and manuscript writing.

YL Tang: data collection and data interpretation.

YH Liu: data analysis and manuscript writing.

WJ Gao: data collection and data interpretation.

JJ Zeng: experiments performing and data interpretation.

L Shi: experiments performing and paper revising.

KL Wei: project development and study design.

G Chen: analysis supervising, project development and manuscript editing.

Data availability statement:

Not applicable.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

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

Ethics approval

The study proposal was ratified by Committee on Ethics of the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University.

Highlights

1. miR-141-3p is upregulated in endometrial carcinoma (EC) tissues.

2. Overexpression of miR-141-3p positively corelates with a poorer prognosis.

3. PPP1R12A and PPP1R12B, target genes of miR-141-3p, are downregulated in EC.

4. Overexpression of miR-141-3p may play an important part in the carcinogenesis of EC.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Health and Family Planning Commission Self-financed Scientific Research Project (Z20200928, Z20180979), Guangxi Higher Education Undergraduate Teaching Reform Project (2020JGA146), Guangxi Medical University Education and Teaching Reform Project (2019XJGZ04) and Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi (2018GXNSFBA281141);Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Health and Family Planning Commission Self-financed Scientific Research [Z20200928];Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi [2018GXNSFBA281141, 2018GXNSFBA281141];Guangxi Medical University Education and Teaching Reform Project [2019XJGZ04];Guangxi Higher Education Undergraduate Teaching Reform Project [2020JGA146];Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Health and Family Planning Commission Self-financed Scientific Research Project [Z20180979, Z20200928];