MicroRNA miR-181a correlates with morphological sub-class of acute myeloid leukaemia and the expression of its target genes in global genome-wide analysis.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short single-stranded RNAs that have a potentially important role in gene regulation. Using a quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction assay specific to the mature miRNA, the expression level of a selected group of haematopoietic tissue-specific miRNAs was measured across a set of 30 primary adult acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) with a normal karyotype. The expression levels of each miRNA were correlated with the genome-wide mRNA expression profiles in the same leukaemias. This revealed that miR-181a correlated strongly with the AML morphological sub-type and with the expression of genes previously identified through sequence analysis as potential interaction targets. Three other miRNAs, miR-10a, miR-10b and miR-196a-1, showed a clear correlation with HOX gene expression.