MicroRNA-142-3p Negatively Regulates Canonical Wnt Signaling Pathway

Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway plays essential roles in mammalian development and tissue homeostasis. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of regulators involved in modulating this pathway. In this study, we screened miRNAs regulating Wnt/β-catenin signaling by using a TopFlash based luciferase reporter. Surprisingly, we found that miR-142 inhibited Wnt/β-catenin signaling, which was inconsistent with a recent study showing that miR-142-3p targeted Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) to upregulate Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Due to the discordance, we elaborated experiments by using extensive mutagenesis, which demonstrated that the stem-loop structure was important for miR-142 to efficiently suppress Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Moreover, the inhibitory effect of miR-142 relies on miR-142-3p rather than miR-142-5p. Further, we found that miR-142-3p directly modulated translation of Ctnnb1 mRNA (encoding β-catenin) through binding to its 3' untranslated region (3' UTR). Finally, miR-142 was able to repress cell cycle progression by inhibiting active Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Thus, our findings highlight the inhibitory role of miR-142-3p in Wnt/β-catenin signaling, which help to understand the complex regulation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling.