MiRNA expression profile of ionizing radiation-induced liver injury in mouse using deep sequencing

In order to investigate the potential regulatory roles of microRNAs (miRNAs) in mouse response to ionizing radiation (IR), the small RNA libraries from liver tissues of mice with or without ionizing radiation (IR) were sequenced by high-throughput deep sequencing technology. A total of 270 miRNAs including 212 known and 58 potentially novel miRNAs were identified. Within these miRNAs, there were 48 miRNAs that were differentially expressed, including 27 known and 21 novel miRNAs. The results of quantitative RT-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) were in consistent with the sequencing analysis. Target gene prediction, function annotation, and pathway of the identified miRNAs were analyzed using RNAhybrid, miRanda software and Swiss-Prot, Gene Ontology (GO), Clusters of Orthologous Groups (COG), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes, and Genomes (KEGG) and non-redundant (NR) databases. These results should be useful to investigate the biological function of miRNAs under IR-induced liver injury.