Patients and samples
In this research, 112 congenital microtia cases were enrolled in the Otorhinolaryngologic Department of Plastic Surgery Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Peking Union Medical College and they conformed to the diagnostic criteria of congenital microtia. The cartilage tissues were obtained from congenital microtia patients receiving ear reconstruction and immediately put into liquid nitrogen, then transferred to -80℃ refrigerator. At the same time, 104 individuals with normal ear receiving other ear operations were as the controls and their cartilage tissues of ear were obtained in surgery. The handling and storage of samples in the controls were as the cases. The controls were frequency-matched with the cases in age and gender.
All subjects were Chinese Han population without any blood relationship each other. This study obtained the support of the Ethics Committee of Plastic Surgery Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Peking Union Medical College and the whole study research process was informed all subjects. Written consents were signed by all study subjects.
RNA extraction and QRT-PCR assay
Totol RNA of cartilage tissue in congenital microtia patients and normal individuals were isolated using Trizol reagent (BBI, Kitchener, Ont., Canada) following the producer’s specification. Then total RNA was as the template to synthesize cDNA using the RevertAdiTM First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kit (Ferments, Glenn Burnie, Md., USA). qRT-PCR reaction was conducted by the SYBR Green PCR master mix (Applied Biosystems, USA) on the 7300 Real-Time PCR System (Applied Biosystems, USA). U6 was as the internal reference to normalize the expression of miR-486-5p. Its relative expression was counted by 2-∆∆Ct method. Every samples were repeated at least 3 times.
Cell culture
Firstly, we isolated cartilage cells from cartilage tissue of congenital microtia cases through 0.25% trypsin and 0.02% collagenase Ⅱ. When the single free cell was observed under an inverted microscope, DMEM media was added to dilute collagenase Ⅱ solution for termination of the digestion, filtration, centrifugation at 1500r/min for 5min. Abandon supernatant, resuspended and putting into 37℃, 5% CO2 incubator. Nutrient solution was replaced three days at a time.
Cell transfection
When the cells were in logarithmic phase, they were conducted transfection. miR-486-5p mimics, inhibitors and corresponding negative control (NC) were respectively transfected into cartilage cells applying Lipofectamine 2000 (Invitrogen, CA, USA) following the producers’ protocol. Then they were cultured at 37℃ containing 5% CO2 for 48h. The transfection efficiency was detected using qRT-PCR method.
Cell proliferation assay
Cell proliferation ability was checked by MTT assay following the standardized protocol (Roche). After transfection, cartilage cells were inoculate in 96-well plates and the density of cells was adjusted to 2×104/well. All groups were incubated for oh, 24h, 48h and 72h. 50μl MTT reagent (5mg/mL) was added into every well, then 37℃ incubation for 4h. The proliferation ability were determined using MTT cell proliferation kit (Cayman Chemical) based on the instruction. MTT enzyme-linked immunometric meter was used to measure OD value (570nm) so as to indicate the proliferation ability of cells .
Apoptosis assay
Cells were seeded into 24 well plates in the density of 1×106/ml and incubated at 37℃, 5% CO2 incubator overnight. Added 10μL PI and 400μL Annexin V-FITC (BD Biosciences, Detroit, MI, USA) in one after another to cells, incubated for 20min at room temperature, dark. Then flow cytometer was used to analyze the situation of cell apoptosis.
Double luciferase report assay
To explore the mechanisms of miR-486-5p in congenital microtia, TargetScanHuman 7.2 (updated March 2018) database analysis was used to investigate its targeted mRNAs. We found that miR-486-5p could bind to 3’UTR of H3F3B gene. To verify the target relationship between miR-486-5p and H3F3B, luciferase reporter assay was adopted. The 3’UTR region of H3F3B gene (H3F3B-wt), as well as the mutant 3’UTR region which did not contain the complementary sequence of miR-486-5p (H3F3B-mut), was synthesized and ligated into the luciferase reporter vector pGL3 (Promega, USA) following the production instruction. Then H3F3B-wt and H3F3B-mut were respectively cotransfected with miR-486-5p mimics or mimic-NC into cartilage cells by Lipofectamine® 2000 reagent (Invitrogen; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.). After incubation for 48h, the transfected cells were harvested, and their luciferase activity was evaluated using dual-luciferase reporter assay system (Promega Corporation) following the instruction.
Western blot
Cartilage tissues were lysed using radio immunoprecipitation assay (RIPA) buffer (Thermo Scientific, Belmont, MA, USA) at 4℃ for 30min. Proteins of cartilage tissues were extracted and isolated by 10% sodium dodecyl sulfonate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). They were transferred onto a PVDF membrane (Roche) and then were blocked by nonfat milk at 4˚C for overnight. Then it was incubated by primary antibodies anti-H3F3B (1:1000) (Abcam, Cambridge, UK) at 4℃ for overnight, GAPDH was as the internal reference, then were incubated at room temperature for 1.5h using second antibody (1:2000, Abcam, Cambridge, UK). The target band of protein was showed using ECL Western blotting kit (Millipore, Boston, MA, USA) according to the producers’ instruction.
Statistical analysis
SPSS 18.0 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for data statistics analysis and figures were plotted by GraphPad Prism (GraphPad, San Diego, CA, USA) software. All experiments were repeated at least in triplicate and the data were expressed using mean±SD (standard deviation). The difference between groups was compared by two-tailed Student’s t-test or χ² test. P<0.05 was considered as the statistically significant difference.