SPION-mediated miR-141 promotes the differentiation of HuAESCs into dopaminergic neuron-like cells via suppressing lncRNA-HOTAIR.

In this study, a bioinformatics analysis and luciferase reporter assay revealed that microRNA-141 could silence the expression of lncRNA-HOTAIR by binding to specific sites on lncRNA-HOTAIR. We used superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) to mediate the high expression of microRNA-141 (SPIONs@miR-141) in human amniotic epithelial stem cells (HuAESCs), which was followed by the induction of the differentiation of HuAESCs into dopaminergic neuron-like cells (iDNLCs). qPCR, western blot, immunofluorescence staining and HPLC all suggested that SPION-mediated overexpression of miR-141 could promote an increased expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), DAT and 5-TH in HuAESC-derived iDNLCs. The RIP and ChIP assay also showed that overexpression of miR-141 could significantly inhibit the recruitment and binding of lncRNA-HOTAIR to EZH2 on BDNF gene promoter. cDNA microarray analysis revealed that the expression levels of 190 genes were much higher in iDNLCs than in HuAESCs. Finally, a protein interaction network analysis and identification showed that in the iDNLC group with SPIONs@miR-141, factors that interact with BDNF, such as FGF8, SHH, NTRK3 and CREB1, all showed significantly higher expression levels compared with those in the SPIONs@miR-Mut. Therefore, this study confirmed that the highly efficient expression of microRNA-141 mediated by SPIONs could improve the efficiency of HuAESCs differentiation into dopaminergic neuron-like cells.