In-silico analysis of important mitochondrial microRNAs and their differential expression in mitochondria

Abstract

Mitochondria, often called as the power house of cell, serves important role in cellular physiology and survivability. It plays crucial role in the normal functioning of the cell. Dysfunctional mitochondria have been found to be associated with various pathological conditions including cancer. The modulation of mitochondrial machinery could be due to the suppression of the expression pattern of important mitochondrial genes and microRNAs could be considered as the key player in reprograming of the mitochondrial metabolism. Apart from the microRNAs coded by mitochondrial genome, nuclear coded microRNAs gets localized to the mitochondria and they influence the mitochondrial machinery by targeting the important mitochondrial genes. This group of microRNAs are called mitochondrial miRNAs or MitomiRs. In this study we selected 10 important candidate mitochondrial microRNAs and checked their abundance in the cancerous and non cancerous hepatic cell line (HepG2 and WRL68), followed by their differential expression in the mitochondria of the respective cell line. The results shown an inverse relation in the expression pattern of the candidate microRNAs with mitochondrial target genes, suggesting their direct targeting, as predicted by our in-silico data.