Abstract:

Ischemic stroke is a serious disease of brain caused by the blood obstruction. Reperfusion is a necessary treatment for ischemic stroke, but itself also causes the secondary injury termed cerebral ischemia/ reperfusion (CIR) injury. In order to elucidate the molecular mechanism of CIR injury, We detected the miRNAs expression profile in rats cortex after focal cerebral ischemia and reperfusion by using miRNA microarray technique, and systematically analyzed the gene ontology function classifications as well as signaling pathways of genes targeted by these differentially expressing miRNAs with bioinformatics tools. The results showed that miRNAs expression profiles were significantly changed in the reperfusion phrase of focal cerebral ischemia, and a total of 15 miRNAs were up-regulated and 44 miRNAs down-regulated. The target genes of these differentially expressed miRNAs were mainly involved in metabolic process and cellular process, which were identified as the hub node of miRNA-GO-network. The most correlated pathways included D-Glutamine and D-glutamate metabolism, renin-angiotensin system, peroxisome, PPAR signaling pathway, SNARE interactions in vesicular transport, and calcium signaling pathway. Our study suggested that miRNAs might play an important role in the pathological process of cerebral ischemia/ reperfusion injury. Understanding miRNAs expression and functions may shed a new light on illustrating the molecular mechanism of CIR injury.

Key words: cerebral ischemia and reperfusion injury, molecular mechanism, miRNAs expression profiles, bioinformatics analysis