Integrated analysis of miRNA and mRNA expression profiling in bovine endometrial cells in response to lipopolysaccharide-stimulation

MicroRNAs (miRNA) play an important role in regulating gene expression, making them important resources for exploring molecular mechanisms. Molecular mechanisms involved in the inflammatory responses of bovine endometrial cells induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) have not been widely studied. In the present study, miRNA and mRNA expression profiling of bovine endometrial cells treated with 1 μg/mL LPS for 24 h were evaluated by RNA-Seq (RNA-sequencing). The results showed that LPS induced 20 (11 up- and 9 down-regulated) differentially-expressed miRNAs and 108 (90 up- and 18 down-regulated) differentially-expressed mRNAs of bovine endometrial cells. The results for 5 mRNAs and 4 miRNAs were evaluated by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) to validate the reliability of the RNA-seq data. Integrating analysis of the miRNA and mRNA expression profiles revealed 116 miRNA-target gene pairs. GO and KEGG pathway analysis of differentially expressed miRNAs and target genes predicted the likely roles of differentially expressed miRNAs in inflammatory responses in bovine endometrial cells induced by LPS. The reliability of the integrating analysis of the miRNA and mRNA data were validated by measuring the expression of three miRNA-target gene pairs by qRT-PCR. Our results improve the understanding of the role of miRNA involvement in inflammatory response of bovine endometrial cells induced by LPS.