lncRNA Facilitates Osteogenic Differentiation of Human Periodontal Ligament Stem Cells by Modulating SOX11 via Sponging miR-6512-3p.

Periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs) are considered ideal cell sources for the regeneration of periodontal and alveolar bone tissue. Cytoskeleton Regulator RNA (), a newly discovered long noncoding RNA, has been reported to function as competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) and to be involved in many biological processes. However, its roles in PDLSC osteogenic differentiation remain unclear. Here, we firstly found was mainly sublocalized in the cytoplasm of PDLSCs and expression was increased during osteogenic differentiation of PDLSCs. By employing gain- and loss-of-function approaches, we then identified overexpression promoted osteogenic differentiation of PDLSCs while knockdown inhibited this process. Furthermore, bioinformatics analysis was utilized to show that both and mRNA contained the same seed sites for miR-6512-3p, which was further confirmed by dual luciferase reporter assay and RNA-binding protein immunoprecipitation. Notably, conferred its functions by directly binding to miR-6512-3p and an inverse correlation between and miR-6512-3p on the level on SOX11 and osteogenic differentiation of PDLSCs was obtained. Additionally, miR-6512-3p could bind to mRNA 3' UTR and repressed SOX11 expression. Moreover, level of SOX11 was significantly increased during osteogenic differentiation of PDLSCs. Knockdown of SOX11 attenuated the increasing effect of overexpression on osteogenic differentiation of PDLSCs. Collectively, these data supported that positively modulated the expression of SOX11 through competitively binding to miR-6512-3p, thus promoting osteogenic differentiation of PDLSCs. The /miR-6512-3p/SOX11 axis could be a novel therapeutic target for periodontal regeneration medicine.