Expression profile of long noncoding RNAs and mRNAs in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from myasthenia gravis patients

•Compared with healthy control, the MG patients had 2595 abnormal expression lncRNAs and 1727 abnormal expression mRNAs.•Bioinformatics approaches were used to predict the target genes and potential functions of differentially expressed lncRNAs.•Differentially expressed lncRNAs may important in the process of MG.

For the epigenetic characterization of myasthenia gravis (MG), we determined whether long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are expressed differentially in subjects with and without MG. Compared with healthy control subjects, the MG patients had 1561 upregulated lncRNAs, 1034 downregulated lncRNAs, 921 upregulated mRNAs, and 806 downregulated mRNAs (fold change > 2.0). Several GO terms including nucleic acid transcription factor activity, inflammatory response, regulation of leukocyte activation, lymphocyte proliferation and regulation of B cell proliferation were enriched in gene lists, suggesting a potential correlation with MG. Pathway analysis then demonstrated that cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, intestinal immune network for lgA production, NOD-like receptor signaling pathway, NF-kappaB signaling pathway, cell adhesion molecules and TNF signaling pathway play important roles in MG. Co-expression network analysis indicated that 33 lncRNAs were predicted to have 31 cis-regulated target genes, and 65 lncRNAs appeared to regulate the patients' 45 trans target genes among differentially expressed lncRNAs. Our present study identified a subset of dysregulated lncRNAs and mRNAs in patients with MG, which may impact this disease process.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (72 K)Download as PowerPoint slide