miRNA profiling of Macaca mulatta intact colon samples during chronic SIV infection

This study describes differential miRNA expression in intact colon tissue during chronic SIV infection of rhesus macaques. Ten miRNAs were found to be significantly affected by infection, with 7 down-regulated and 3 up-regulated miRNAs. The expression of one upregulated miRNA was further characterized and found to be upregulated in both colonic epithelium and lamain propria cells. Further, its expression positively correlated with colonic inflammation scores and viral loads. Additional studies suggested that its expression was driven in response to oxidative stress induced double stranded DNA damage response and may play a role in chronic activation of colonic plasma cells. We performed TaqMan Low Density Array based high throughput miRNA analysis on intact colon tissue from 12 chronically SIV-infected and 4 uninfected control macaques. All SIV-infected animals were inoculated intravenously with 100TCID50 of SIV. Out of the ten, one animal each was at 7, 8 and 10DPI (days post infection), 3 each at 13 and 21DPI, and 1 at 29DPI. microRNA reverse transcription and preamplification was performed according to the manufacturer’s recommendation. Data analysis was performed using RQ Manager 1.2.2 and DataAssist v3.01 software. Data was normalized using Global normalization method and multiple comparisons correction was performed using Benjamini-Hochberg method.