The expression profile analysis of high-throughput lncRNA sequencing in preterm brain tissue induced by intrauterine infection/inflammation

Abstract Background Intrauterine infection, is one of the important causes of brain injury in preterm infants. Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) is a class of RNA molecules defined as being > 200 nucleotides in length which play a key role in brain development. In this study, we investigate the role of lncRNAs in a rat model of preterm brain tissue induced by intrauterine infection/inflammation. Method We divided the rats into the intrauterine infection/inflammation group and the control group then collected brain tissues from fetal or newborn rats at E17, E21, D1 and D3, respectively. High-throughput sequencing was used to analyze differentially expressed lncRNAs in brain tissue from rats and utilized bioinformatics analyzes to investigate the potential functions of these differentially expressed lncRNAs. Finally, to validated the lncRNA-sequencing results were reliable and explore the timeliness changes, we selected lncRNAs for quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis at each point of time. Result A total of 377 differentially expressed lncRNAs were detected in brain tissue at E17, including 189 were upregulated and 188 were downregulated. Then detected 317 differentially expressed lncRNAs at D1, among which 168 were upregulated and 149 were downregulated. Moreover, the expression levels of selected lncRNAs were identified by qRT-PCR, demonstrating that the expression levels were consistent with the high-throughput sequencing results and has time-space specificity. Conclusion This study demonstrated the profile of lncRNA expression in brain tissue induced by intrauterine infection/inflammation was different from that in the normal control. Then, provides valuable data and new insights into the biological mechanisms of preterm brain injury.