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The pathophysiology of coronary atherosclerotic plaques is a complex process. Early detection of coronary atherosclerotic plaques is critical in the prevention, prognostic and therapeutic intervention of cardiovascular disease. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), endogenous short non-coding RNAs, have been reported to play an important role in cardiovascular diseases and are also used as disease markers. However, the miRNA expression profile in early coronary atherosclerotic plaques has yet been reported. We hypothesize that miRNAs can be used as effective disease markers for detection of early coronary atherosclerotic plaques. In this analysis, coronary artery samples from three patients with early coronary atherosclerosis were harvested and miRNA expression profile determined using microarray analysis. Compared with healthy controls, a total of 44 miRNAs were upregulated and 57 miRNAs were downregulated. Among the dysregulated miRNAs, eight were significantly upregulated while five miRNAs were significantly downregulated, as determined by t- test ( P < 0.05). Four of the significantly dysregulated miRNAs, including miR-221, miR-155, miR-100 and hsa-miR-1273, were selected and verified by real-time PCR. The real-time PCR results were consistent with the microarray data that miR-221, miR-155 and miR-100 were significantly downregulated in plaques, whereas miR-1273 was significantly upregulated. These results indicate that miRNAs expression level can be used as potential markers for early coronary atherosclerotic plaque formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Human embryonic stem (hES) cells hold great promise in regenerative medicine. Although hES cells have unlimited self-renewal potential, they tend to differentiate spontaneously in culture. TRA-1-81 is a biomarker of undifferentiated hES cells. Quantitative characterization of TRA-1-81 expression level in a single cell helps capture the “turn-on” signal and understand the mechanism of early differentiation. Here, we report on our examination of TRA-1-81 distribution and association on a hES cell membrane using an atomic force microscope (AFM). Our results suggest that aggregated distribution of TRA-1-81 antigen is characteristic for undifferentiated hES cells. We also evaluated the TRA-1-81 expression level at ∼17,800 epitopes and ∼700 epitopes per cell on an undifferentiated cell and a spontaneously differentiated cell, respectively. The method in this study can be adapted in examining other surface proteins on various cell types, thus providing a general tool for investigating protein distribution and association at the single cell level. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]