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Updated: Jun 9, 2025

A Complete Pipeline for Isolating and Sequencing MicroRNAs, and Analyzing Them Using Open Source Tools
Published on: August 21, 2019
Single-Cell Multiplexed Signal Amplification Strategy Based on Catalytic Hairpin Self-Assembly and CRISPR/Cas12a for
Ruiyan Li1, Yuhai Chen1, Rongxiang Pan1
1State Key Laboratory for the Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Medicinal Resources, Key Laboratory of Ecology of Rare and Endangered Species and Environmental Protection, School of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 541004, China.
Abstract:
The long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) HOTAIR has been shown to act as an oncogene in a variety of cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). MicroRNA-122 (miR-122) is a key liver-specific miRNA that is frequently inhibited in HCC and is associated with poor prognosis. However, a potential relationship between HOTAIR and miR-122 in individual hepatocytes has not been explored. To this end, we propose here an intracellular catalytic hairpin self-assembly-CRISPR/Cas12a tandem multiplexed signal amplification strategy for the simultaneous quantification of HOTAIR and miRNA-122 in a single hepatocyte. We applied this method to analyze both normal HL-7702 liver cells and HepG2 HCC cells, and found that HL-7702 cells contained large amounts of miRNA-122, while the content of miRNA-122 in HepG2 cells was low. However, the level of HOTAIR in HepG2 cells was much higher than that in HL-7702 cells, confirming the overexpression of HOTAIR in HCC cells. We achieved the simultaneous absolute quantification of HOTAIR and miRNA-122 in single cells, providing an important method to study the relationships between these two RNA molecules in individual cells.

