The involvement of motor neuron specific miR-218 in human ALS

Motor-neuron specific microRNA-218 (miR-218) was recently put in the spotlight because of its striking roles in mouse development. However, miR-218 relevance to human motor neuron disease was not yet explored. Here, we demonstrate by neuropathology that miR-218 is abundant in healthy human motor neurons. However, in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) motor neurons miR-218 is downregulated and its mRNA targets are reciprocally upregulated (de-repressed). We further identify the potassium channel Kv10.1 as a new miR-218 direct target that controls neuronal activity. In addition, we screened thousands of ALS genomes and identified six rare variants in the human miR-218-2 sequence. Intriguingly, miR-218 gene variants fail to regulate neuron activity, suggesting the importance of this small endogenous RNA for neuronal robustness. The underlying mechanisms involve inhibition of miR-218 biogenesis and reduced processing by DICER. Therefore, miR-218 activity uncovers a previously unappreciated facet of motor neuron specificity that may be particularly susceptible to failure in human ALS, contributes to a view of ALS as a disease with a prominent RNA component and suggests that miR-218 is a potential therapeutic target for motor neuron disease. mRNA profiles were generated from primary motor neuorn transduced with lentiviruses encoding miR-218 overexpression (OE), miR-218 knockdown (KD), or control lentiviruses (empty) . Experiments were performed in duplicates