Search

Spermatogenesis has a close relationship with male infertility. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play crucial roles in their regulation of target genes during spermatogenesis. A huge dataset of high-throughput sequencing all over the world provides the basis to dig the cryptic molecular mechanism. But how to take advantage of the big data and unearth the miRNA regulation is still a challenging problem. Here we integrated transcriptome of spermatogenesis and found miRNA regulate spermatogenesis through miRNA editing. We then compared different species and found that the distributions of miRNA editing site number and editing types among different cell types during spermatogenesis are conservative. Interesting, we further found that nearly half of the editing events occurred in the seed region in both mouse and pig. Finally, we foundmiR-34c, which is edited frequently at all stages during spermatogenesis, regulates its target genes through the RNA structure changing and shows dysfunction when it is edited. Summary, we depicted the overall profile of miRNA editing during spermatogenesis in mouse and pig and reveal miR-34c may play its roles through miRNA editing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Porcine pancreatic stem cells (PSCs) are seed cells with potential use for diabetes treatment. Stem cell differentiation requires strict control of protein turnover and lysosomal digestion of organelles. Autophagy is a highly conserved process that controls the turnover of organelles and proteins within cells and contributes to the balance of cellular components. However, whether autophagy plays roles in PSC differentiation remains unknown. In this study, we successfully induced porcine PSCs into insulin-producing cells and found that autophagy was activated during the second induction stage. Inhibition of autophagy in the second stage resulted in reduced differentiational efficiency and impaired glucose-stimulated insulin secretion. Moreover, the expression of active β-catenin increased while autophagy was activated but was suppressed when autophagy was inhibited. Therefore, autophagy is essential to the formation of insulin-producing cells, and the effects of autophagy on differentiation may be regulated by canonical Wnt signalling pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Porcine pancreatic stem cells (PSCs) are one kind of the potential cells for treatment of human diabetes. Autophagy is a highly conserved cellular degradation process in which it helps to maintain the balance between the synthesis, degradation and subsequent recycling of cellular components. However, how autophagy contributes to PSCs has not yet been investigated. Here, we established GFP-LC3 transfected porcine PSC lines in which the accumulation of autophagosomes can be efficiently visualized to evaluate the autophagic activity. Moreover, we observed that starved PSCs which showed increased autophagic activity exhibited an increased tendency to proliferate through the results of BrdU, flow cytometry and western blotting. Furthermore, increased expression of active β-catenin after inducing autophagy indicated that it might be the canonical Wnt signaling that autophagy activated to exert the function on the stimulation of PSCs proliferation. Collectively, these results demonstrated that autophagy stimulated proliferation of PSCs might be regulated by the canonical Wnt signaling pathway. Our results for the first time shed light on a role of autophagy for stimulating the proliferation of porcine PSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]