BioProject

Ectopic expression of neuronal microRNAs (miRNAs), miR-9/9* and miR-124 (miR-9/9*-124) in adult human fibroblasts has been found to evoke extensive reconfigurations of the chromatin and direct the fate conversion to neurons. More...

Ectopic expression of neuronal microRNAs (miRNAs), miR-9/9* and miR-124 (miR-9/9*-124) in adult human fibroblasts has been found to evoke extensive reconfigurations of the chromatin and direct the fate conversion to neurons. We found that miR-9/9* and miR-124 led to the repression of REST, a transcriptional repressor of neuronal genes, during microRNA-mediated neuronal conversion and knockdown of REST enhanced the activation of BAF53b, a mature neuronal marker. Furthermore, time series analysis of the transcriptome of cells undergoing the miR-9/9*-124-induced conversion indicated upregulated genetic pathways that were predicted to be targeted by REST although the transcript level of REST remained unchanged (Abernathy et al., 2017). Therefore, we reasoned that knocking down REST in addition to miR-9/9*-124 at an early time point (day 7), in which REST repression is minimally evident during neuronal conversion, would speed up the adoption of neuronal identity. We performed the RNA-seq analysis to compared differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between human adult fibroblasts expressing control shRNA (shCTL) and reprogramming cells expressing shCTL or shREST at day 7. Finally, we found that the repression of REST constitutes an important component of microRNA-mediated neuronal reprogramming of human fibroblasts. Overall design: RNA-seq analysis in 6 samples (2 replicates each) of human adult fibroblasts expressing control shRNA (shCTL) and reprogramming cells expressing shCTL or shREST at day 7. Less...