Effect of erythropoietin on the microRNA expression levels of SH-SY5Y cell line

Erythropoietin (EPO) is a hematopoietic growth factor and cytokine which stimulates erythropoiesis. In recent years it?s been shown that EPO and its receptor is expressed in the brain, neurons and the glial cells. Epo has a critical role in the development, maintenance, protection and repairment of the nervous system. A possible mechanism of Epo is gene regulation at the transcriptional level. MicroRNAs(miRNAs) which are small, non-coding RNAs have an important role in this process. miRNAs regulate gene expression through mRNA degradation or translational inhibition. It?s thought that miRNAs have a role in development, plasticity and neurodegeneration of the nervous system. In this study our goal is to observe the effect of EPO on the miRNA expression in SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cell line. For this purpose neuronal cell line SH-SY5Y has been induced by EPO and any miRNA expression changes that occured has been detected by miRNA microarray and Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (QPCR) methods both. Target genes of miRNAs whose expression has changed has been predicted by bioinformatics analysis. According to our results expression changes of miR-885-5p, miR-1236, miR-451 miR-640 and miR-4303 are found significant. targets of miR-885-5p and miR-451 has a high probability of playing a role in EPO?s action mechanism. Although our study is the first one to show that EPO induction stimulates miRNA expression change in neuronal cells further research like target validation for determined miRNAs should be conducted.