Regulation signature of miR-143 and miR-26 in porcine Salmonella infection identified by binding site enrichment analysis.

Salmonella infects many vertebrate species, and pigs colonized with Salmonella are typically Salmonella carriers. Transcriptomic analysis of the response to Salmonella infection in whole blood has been reported for the pig. The objective of this study is to identify the important miRNAs involved in Salmonella infection using binding site enrichment analysis. We predicted porcine microRNA (miRNA) binding sites in the 3' UTR of protein-coding genes for all miRNA families. Based on those predictions, we analyzed miRNA-binding sites for mRNAs expressed in peripheral blood to investigate the functional importance of miRNAs in Salmonella infection in pig. Enrichment analysis revealed that binding sites of five miRNAs (including miR-143, -9839, -26, -2483, and -4335) were significantly over represented for the differentially expressed gene sets. Real-time PCR results indicated that selected members of this miRNA group (miR-143, -26, and -4335) were differentially expressed in whole blood after Salmonella inoculation. The luciferase reporter assay showed that ATP6V1A and IL13RA1 were targets of miR-143 and that miR-26 regulates BINP3L and ARL6IP6. The results strongly suggest that miR-143 and miR-26 play important regulatory roles in the development of Salmonella infection in pig.