mir-302b-3p promotes self-renewal properties in leukemia inhibitory factor-withdrawn embryonic stem cells

Objective: embryonic stem cells (escs) are regulated by a gene regulatory circuitry composed of transcription factors, signaling pathways, metabolic mediators, and non-coding rnas (ncrnas). micrornas (mirnas) are short ncrnas which play crucial roles in escs. here, we explored the impact of mir-302b-3p on esc self-renewal in the absence of leukemia inhibitory factor (lif). materials and methods: in this experimental study, escs were cultured in the presence of 15% fetal bovine serum (fbs) and induced to differentiate by lif removal. mir-302b-3p overexpression was performed by transient transfection of mature mirna mimics. cell cycle profiling was done using propidium iodide (pi) staining followed by flow cytometry. mirna expression was quantified using a mir-302b-3p-specific taqman assay. data were analyzed using t test, and a p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. results: we observed that mir-302b-3p promoted the viability of both wild-type and lif-withdrawn escs. it also increased esc clonogenicity and alkaline phosphatase (ap) activity. the defective cell cycling of lif-deprived escs was completely rescued by mir-302b-3p delivery. moreover, mir-302b-3p inhibited the increased cell death rate induced by lif removal. conclusion: mir-302b-3p, as a pluripotency-associated mirna, promotes diverse features of esc self-renewal in the absence of extrinsic lif signals.