Identification of Differentially Expressed lncRNAs in a CpG ODN-Activated Macrophage

A macrophage is an important component of innate immunity which can be activated by infection. A series of inflammatory cytokines are produced and released to eliminate pathogens. CpG DNA is an immune stimulator recognized by TLR9, subsequently inducing inflammatory responses in macrophages. Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) is a novel class of noncoding RNA, whose length is more than 200 nt, but without protein-coding capacity. lncRNAs are involved in many physiological and pathological processes, including inflammatory responses. In our study, a lncRNA microarray assay was performed to identify differentially expressed lncRNAs and mRNAs in RAW264.7 cells at different time points following CpG ODN stimulation. The results revealed that expression levels of 734 lncRNAs and 734 mRNAs were altered at all time points. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) biological pathway analyses were performed to predict the functions of dysregulated genes. Coexpression networks of lncRNA-mRNA were constructed based on the correlation analysis between differentially expressed lncRNAs and 10 selected upregulated mRNAs, which have been reported to be involved in CpG DNA-induced inflammatory responses. In addition, we selected 8 dysregulated lncRNAs for further validation by quantitative real-time PCR. The present study provided a systematic perspective on the potential functions of lncRNAs in CpG ODN-induced macrophage activation.