Bioinformatics approach reveals the gene targets of Ebola virus microRNAs involved in the human skin microbiome
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Bioinformatics, Microbiology, Infectious Diseases, Medical Genetics
- Keywords
- THSD4, microbiome, Ebola virus, microRNA, bioinformatics, Propionibacterium acnes
- Copyright
- © 2017 Hsu et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Bioinformatics approach reveals the gene targets of Ebola virus microRNAs involved in the human skin microbiome. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2959v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2959v1
Abstract
The Ebola virus, a negative-sense single-stranded RNA virus, causes severe viral hemorrhagic fever and is highly lethal. Histopathology and immunopathologic study of Ebola virus have revealed that histopathologic changes in skin tissue were mainly various degrees of endothelial cell swelling and necrosis. The interactions of microbes within or on a host are a crucial aspect of the skin immune shield. The discovery of microRNAs in Ebola virus implies that immune escape, endothelial cell rupture and tissue dissolution during Ebola virus infection are all results of the action of Ebola virus miRNAs. Keratinocytes obtained from normal skin and subsequently attached and spread on the thrombospondin protein family may play a role in initiating cell-mediated immune responses in the skin. Several miRNAs have been observed to bind the 3' untranslated region of the thrombospondin mRNA, thereby controlling its stability and translational activity. In this study, we first discover short RNA sequences that might act as miRNAs from Propionibacterium acnes by design a practical workflow of bioinformatics methods. Subsequently, we deciphered the common target gene. These RNA sequences tend to binding to the same thrombospondin protein. These RNA sequences tend to bind to the same protein , THSD4, emphasizing the potential importance of the synergistic binding of miRNAs from Ebola virus, Propionibacterium acnes , and humans to the target. By RNA expression validation, we prove the potential synergistic binding of the miRNA from Ebola virus, Propionibacterium acnes and human to the target.
Author Comment
In this manuscript, we show the following results:
In this experiment, we revealed that PA-mir-2-3p-5 might be a very short RNA sequence but it could also behave as a miRNA.
Transfection of two different short RNAs together could also increase the expression of THSD4 mRNA better than transfection miRNA alone.
The mRNAs tend to contain several binding sites for the miRNA, emphasizing the potential importance of synergistic binding of the miRNA to the target. We believe that this manuscript is appropriate for publication by Peer J because it provides biologists possible way to access bioinformatics tools for future studies.