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Neurogenetics
Published in: neurogenetics 3/2008

01-07-2008 | Original Article

Heterogeneous dysregulation of microRNAs across the autism spectrum

Authors: Kawther Abu-Elneel, Tsunglin Liu, Francesca S. Gazzaniga, Yuhei Nishimura, Dennis P. Wall, Daniel H. Geschwind, Kaiqin Lao, Kenneth S. Kosik

Published in: Neurogenetics | Issue 3/2008

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Abstract

microRNAs (miRNAs) are ~21 nt transcripts capable of regulating the expression of many mRNAs and are abundant in the brain. miRNAs have a role in several complex diseases including cancer as well as some neurological diseases such as Tourette’s syndrome and Fragile x syndrome. As a genetically complex disease, dysregulation of miRNA expression might be a feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Using multiplex quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR), we compared the expression of 466 human miRNAs from postmortem cerebellar cortex tissue of individuals with ASD (n = 13) and a control set of non-autistic cerebellar samples (n = 13). While most miRNAs levels showed little variation across all samples suggesting that autism does not induce global dysfunction of miRNA expression, some miRNAs among the autistic samples were expressed at significantly different levels compared to the mean control value. Twenty-eight miRNAs were expressed at significantly different levels compared to the non-autism control set in at least one of the autism samples. To validate the finding, we reversed the analysis and compared each non-autism control to a single mean value for each miRNA across all autism cases. In this analysis, the number of dysregulated miRNAs fell from 28 to 9 miRNAs. Among the predicted targets of dysregulated miRNAs are genes that are known genetic causes of autism such Neurexin and SHANK3. This study finds that altered miRNA expression levels are observed in postmortem cerebellar cortex from autism patients, a finding which suggests that dysregulation of miRNAs may contribute to autism spectrum phenotype.
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Metadata
Title
Heterogeneous dysregulation of microRNAs across the autism spectrum
Authors
Kawther Abu-Elneel
Tsunglin Liu
Francesca S. Gazzaniga
Yuhei Nishimura
Dennis P. Wall
Daniel H. Geschwind
Kaiqin Lao
Kenneth S. Kosik
Publication date
01-07-2008
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
Neurogenetics / Issue 3/2008
Print ISSN: 1364-6745
Electronic ISSN: 1364-6753
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10048-008-0133-5

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