targetscan.org), miRTarBase (http://mirtarbase.mbc.nctu.edu.tw) and MicroCosm Targets (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/enright-srv/microcosm/htdocs/targets/v5/)
to detect the potential downstream targets of miR-320c. Among all the candidate genes FRAX597 in vitro buy JSH-23 predicted by the online tools, CDK6, a potential downstream target of miR-320c, was of particular interest because all online tools indicated that it had a very high scoring predicted binding site and CDK6 was considered to be a positive cell cycle regulator (G1/S transition) in many types of cancer [24–26]. Additionally, we also searched for information on conservation of CDK6 among species. The NCBI database illustrates that CDK6 gene is conserved in many species, including chimpanzee, dog, cow, mouse, rat, zebra fish, fruit fly, mosquito and C.elegans (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/homologene/963). Previous study indicated that the expression of CDK6 increased drastically in bladder cancerous tissues compared with NCT-501 mouse their non-cancerous counterparts and elevated CDK6 expression resulted in the development of bladder cancer [26]. In our study, an increased expression pattern of CDK6 was observed in
the human bladder cancer cell lines UM-UC-3 and T24 compared with non-tumor urothelial cell line SV-HUC-1 (Figure 3A). Moreover, we verified that the expression of CDK6 drastically reduced in both levels of mRNA and protein after the transfection of miR-320c, which was consistent with the cell cycle arrest phenomenon (Figure 3B, C). Figure 3 CDK6 is a direct target of miR-320c. (A) An increased expression pattern of CDK6 was observed in UM-UC-3 and T24 cells compared with SV-HUC-1 cells. (B, C) Over-expression of miR-320c reduced CDK6 expression level in both cell lines significantly (levels of mRNA and protein). (D) A predicted seed region in the 3′-UTR of CDK6 was illustratred (top). The mutated sequence was highlighted in underline (bottom). (E) 293 T cells were co-transfected
with 50nM of either miR-320c mimic or NC oligos and 200 ng plasmid containing Wt or next Mut of CDK6 3’-UTR. The relative firefly luciferase activity normalized with Renilla luciferase was calculated 48 h after transfection (*P < 0.05). CDK6 is a novel direct target of miR-320c In order to clarify whether CDK6 was a direct downstream target of miR-320c, the synthesized 3′-UTR of CDK 6 was cloned into down-stream of firefly luciferase of pmirGLO Dual-Luciferase miRNA Target Expression Vector. Additionally, we also constructed another vector with mutated putative binding sites (Figure 3D). The results illustrated that HEK 293 T cells transiently transfected with the Wt-3′- UTR-reporter and miR-320c exhibited drastically reduced relative luciferase activity compared with co-transfection of Wt and NC. However, co-transfection of Mut CDK6 3′-UTR and miR-320c or NC did not affect the relative luciferase activity (Figure 3E).