FU Xinyue, SONG Xinni, LIU Jiali, LIU Yujian, SHI Songli, NIU Shufang, CHANG Hong, WANG Peng, QI Jun, BAI Wanfu
Objective: To investigate the impact of Mongolian medicine saorilao-4 (SRL-4) on miRNA and core genes involved in the gene regulatory network of lung tissue in rats with pulmonary fibrosis (PF). Methods: Rats were randomly divided into four groups: blank control group (CON), model group (MOD), positive drug control group, and SRL-4 group. Except for the CON group, rats in the other groups were administered with bleomycin via intratracheal injection to establish a pulmonary fibrosis model. The total RNA was extracted from rat lung tissue for transcriptome sequencing. The differentially expressed miRNA (DEM) in each group was screened by the difference analysis software edge R. The differentially expressed gene (DEG) of DEM was predicted by miRanda. The GO and KEGG were used to analyze the biological function enrichment of DEG. Cytoscape was used to construct the target gene regulatory network and screen the core genes. Results: Compared with CON, MOD selected 16 DEMs. Compared with MOD, SRL-4 screened 10 DEMs and regulated 63 052 target genes. GO analysis showed that the DEGs of SRL-4 and MOD were enriched in 52 GO entries. KEGG analysis showed that DEG was enriched in 182 signaling pathways, among which the number of genes related to purine metabolic pathway was the highest. By constructing a gene regulatory network, six core genes were screened, namely Spata25, Sultan1a1, Mpv17i, Cryba4, Jakmip3 and Fkbp5. Conclusion: By constructing a miRNA-Target regulatory network between SRL-4 and MOD, we identified six hub genes that are considered key molecules in the gene regulatory network for the treatment of PF. The improvement effect of SRL-4 on PF may be related to miR-433-3p, novel_202, miR-150-3p, and these 6 core genes. The purine metabolism-related signaling pathway may be a critical target and essential pathway for the treatment of PF.
