Differential Expression of Micrornas At the Last Stage of Hepatic Differentiation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Background and aim: micrornas (mirnas) are small noncoding rnas that can play essential roles in a wide variety of biological processes from proliferation and differentiation to metabolism and apoptosis. hepatic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) is a highly regulated multistep process involving posttranscriptional regulation by micrornas. in the present study, mirna expression profiles were determined during hepatocyte-specific differentiation of adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells (adscs).methods: in this study, hadscs were differentiated to hepatocytes by a two-step protocol for 21 days and after characterization of hepatic differentiation of hadscs by biochemical, morphological and molecular methods, a high throughput array platform (affymetrix) was used for mirna profiling at two time points (days 14 and 21).results: by performing genome-wide mirna profiling assay, we have identified a signature of 354 differentially expressed canonical mirnas (166 upregulated; 188 downregulated) during the last stage of hepatic differentiation of adscs. top 5 ranking mirnas in volume with significant cut-off, ǀfcǀ≥2 or ǀfcǀ≤2, were hsa-mir-4497, hsa-mir-4454, hsa-mir-26a-5p, hsa-mir-3178, hsa-mir-222-3p.conclusion: our findings provide novel molecular insights into the identification of mirnas regulating hepatic differentiation of adscs during the late stages and a roadmap for further understanding msc biology.