A negative feedback loop between nuclear factor 90 (NF90) and an anti-oncogenic microRNA, miR-7

Alterations in microRNAs (miRNAs) levels deeply correlate with tumorigenesis. However, the molecular mechanism for the regulation of the miRNA production in tumors is not fully understood. We previously reported that downregulation of miR-7, which is an anti-oncogenic miRNA, was caused by overexpression of the nuclear factor 90 (NF90)-nuclear factor 45 (NF45) complex through the binding of double-stranded (ds) RNA-binding proteins to primary miR-7, resulting in promotion of tumorigenesis (Higuchi et al 2016). During this study, we found that the level of NF90 protein was dramatically decreased by overexpression of miR-7. Interestingly, the miR-7-mediated reduction in NF90 family proteins was only observed in NF90 protein, but not in NF110 protein, which is a longer form of the NF90 gene. Luciferase reporter analysis indicated that the overexpression of miR-7 significantly repressed the luciferase activity in the coding region of NF90 mRNA harboring a predicted target sequence of miR-7. The luciferase activity of the reporter vector, which has a mutated miR-7 target site in the coding region, was the same in the control and miR-7 overexpressed cells. Furthermore, the translation of TARGET-tagged NF90 mRNA without the 3′UTR of the NF90 mRNA was inhibited by the overexpression of miR-7. These results imply that miR-7 suppresses NF90 at the protein level through the binding of miR-7 to the complementary site of the seed sequence in the coding region of the NF90 mRNA. We further confirmed increased endogenous NF90 protein levels in SK-N-SH cells transfected with antisense oligonucleotides targeting miR-7, indicating that miR-7-mediated translational repression of NF90 is a physiological event. Taken together with our previous findings (Higuchi et al 2016), it suggests that the level of NF90 is increased by a negative feedback loop between NF90 and miR-7 in tumor tissues under physiological conditions.