Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2015, 16(5), 10921-10933; doi:10.3390/ijms160510921
MicroRNA-27a-3p Inhibits Melanogenesis in Mouse Skin Melanocytes by Targeting Wnt3a
1
College of Animal Science and Technology, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu 030801, China
2
Laboratory of Animal Biotechnology and Genomics, Division of Animal and Nutritional Sciences, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Constantinos Stathopoulos
Received: 1 March 2015 / Accepted: 6 May 2015 / Published: 14 May 2015
(This article belongs to the Section Biochemistry and Molecular Biology)
Abstract
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an essential role in the regulation of almost all the biological processes, including melanogenesis. MiR-27a-3p is nearly six times higher in white alpaca skin compared to brown skin, which indicates that miR-27a-3p may be a candidate regulator for melanogenesis. Wnt3a plays an important role in promoting melanoblasts to differentiate into melanocytes and melanogenesis. To confirm the function of miR-27a-3p to melanogenesis in mammals, miR-27a-3p mimic, inhibitor and their negative control were transfected into mouse melanocytes. As a result, miR-27a-3p inhibits melanogenesis by repressing Wnt3a at post-transcriptional level. A significant decrease in Wnt3a luciferase activity was observed in 293T cells co-transfected with the matched luciferase reporter vector and pre-miR-27a. Furthermore, the presence of exogenous miR-27a-3p significantly decreased Wnt3a protein expression rather than mRNA and reduced β-catenin mRNA levels in melanocytes. The over-expression of miR-27a-3p significantly increased the melanin content of melanocytes. However, miR-27a-3p inhibitor performs an opposite effect on melanogenesis. Wnt3a is one target of miR-27a-3p. MiR-27a-3p could inhibit Wnt3a protein amount by post-transcriptional regulation and melanogenesis in mouse melanocytes. Previous studies reported that Wnt3a promoted melanogenensis in mouse melanocytes. Thus, miR-27-3p inhibits melanogenesis by repressing Wnt3a protein expression. View Full-TextKeywords:
melanogenesis; Wnt3a; miR-27a-3p; post-transcriptional regulation
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).
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MDPI and ACS Style
Zhao, Y.; Wang, P.; Meng, J.; Ji, Y.; Xu, D.; Chen, T.; Fan, R.; Yu, X.; Yao, J.; Dong, C. MicroRNA-27a-3p Inhibits Melanogenesis in Mouse Skin Melanocytes by Targeting Wnt3a. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2015, 16, 10921-10933.
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