microRNA expression in heart tissue. Mus musculus

Ischemia reperfusion (I/R) injury is an unavoidable event occurring during heart transplantation, leading to graft failures and lower long-term survival rate of the recipient. microRNAs are major regulators of genes. IR causes apoptosis/death of cardiomyocytes, resulting from up-regulation of apoptotic genes and down-regulation of anti-apoptotic genes which are regulated by microRNA. We used microarrays to detail the global programme of gene expression underlying cellularisation and identified distinct classes of up-regulated genes during this process. Overall design: We perserved donor hearts with university of Wisconsin solution for 18h at 4C degree before being implanted into recipients to create ischemia reperfusion injury. The preserved hearts were implanted into a syngeneic recipient mice. 24h after transplantation, heart grafts were harvested for microRNA extraction.