Muscle miRNAs are influenced by sex at baseline and in response to exercise

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of sex on miRNA expression in skeletal muscle. MiRNAs were first screened using Taqman®miRNA arrays in skeletal muscle of 42 healthy participants from the Gene SMART study (23 males and 19 females aged 18-45 yrs). Based on this 2 candidate miRNAs, hsa-miRNA-30a-5p (miR-30a) and hsa-miRNA-30c-5p (miR-30c), were overexpressed in three female and three male primary skeletal muscle lines. Overexpression of miR-30a and miR-30c was confirmed by quantifying transcript levels using qPCR RNA sequencing to understand the transcriptome profile changes driven by these miRNAs and to explore the putative biological pathways. Comparative gene expression profiling analysis of RNA-seq data for male and female donor cells lines with and without overexpression of miR-30a and miR-30c.