Unraveling the Expression Profiles of Long Noncoding RNAs in Rat Cardiac Hypertrophy and Functions of lncRNA BC088254 in Cardiac Hypertrophy Induced by Transverse Aortic Constriction.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), although initially considered as genomic transcription noise, have been demonstrated to play pivotal roles in multiple biological processes and are increasingly recognized as contributors to the pathology of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, heart diseases, and inflammation. However, studies on the roles of lncRNAs in angiocardiopathy, particularly in cardiac hypertrophy, are still preliminary. In our study, differentially expressed lncRNAs in rat cardiac hypertrophy induced by transverse aortic constriction (TAC) were identified by microarray analysis and validated using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Briefly, we identified 6,969 lncRNAs, among which 80 lncRNAs were significantly upregulated and 172 lncRNAs were significantly downregulated. Quantitative RT-PCR was used to validate the differential expression of 5 lncRNAs in myocardial tissue RNA. Further, pathway analysis indicated that 25 pathways corresponded to upregulated transcripts and 20 pathways corresponded to downregulated transcripts. Third, by coexpression network analysis, we found a correlation between BC088254 and phb2 (prohibitin 2) and verified this expression by RT-PCR and Western blot. This is the first study to reveal differentially expressed lncRNAs in rat cardiac hypertrophy induced by TAC, indicating potential lncRNA mechanisms of action in myocardial hypertrophy. We also found that lncRNA BC088254 may have a certain role in myocardial hypertrophy induced by TAC and functional relevance between lncRNA BCO88254 and phb2, but the relationship between these two factors is unclear.