Identification and bioinformatics analysis of miRNAs involved in bovine skeletal muscle satellite cell myogenic differentiation.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short non-coding RNA molecules that perform post-transcriptional repression of target genes by binding to 3' untranslated regions, and involved in the regulation of many biological processes. Some studies indicate that miRNAs are mechanistically involved in the muscle growth and differentiation. However, little is known about miRNAs expression patterns during the process of bovine skeletal muscle satellite cell myogenic differentiated into myotubes. To investigate the mechanisms of miRNAs-mediated regulation during this process, we performed a miRNAs microarray to detect 783 bovine miRNAs in bovine skeletal muscle satellite cell myogenic differentiation, and the results were further confirmed by a quantitative real-time RT-PCR assay. We observed that the expression of 15 miRNAs was significantly different between bovine skeletal muscle satellite cells and differentiated myotubes, in which twelve were significantly up-regulated and three were down-regulated in myotubes. Furthermore, using bioinformatics methods, the targets of differentially expressed miRNAs were predicted, and were further subjected to gene ontology (GO) and KEGG analysis. A total of 3077 potential target genes were produced, and the highly enriched GOs and KEGG pathways showed that these genes together formed a regulatory network that involved in cell proliferation, cell differentiation, and multiple biological molecular signaling processes. Taken together, the results of the current study suggested the potential regulating roles of these differentially expressed miRNAs in bovine myogenic differentiation.