ANRIL siRNA Microarray Data in HUVECs

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the most common cardiovascular disease and the leading cause of death worldwide. To date, the 9p21.3 locus is the most robust and frequently replicated risk locus of CAD among >90 CAD risk loci identified by GWAS. More than 50 CAD-associated genomic variants were identified at the 9p21.3 CAD locus and many of them are located within a long non-coding gene ANRIL, which was initially referred to as Antisense Non-coding RNA in INK4 Locus. The causal role of ANRIL in CAD and the underlying molecular mechanism are unknown. We used gene expression microarray to identify the downstream target genes of ANRIL and to explore molecular mechanisms by which ANRIL might contribute to the risk development of CAD. Three sets of human umbilical vascular endothelial cells (HUVECs) were transfected with ANRIL-specific siRNA or control scrambled siRNA. Global gene expression of each transfected cell sample was profiled by Affymetrix GeneChip Human Genomic U133 Plus 2.0 array. Differential expression analysis was conducted between ANRIL siRNA transfected and scrambled siRNA transfected cells. Top-ranked downstream genes of ANRIL were confirmed by independent semi-quantitative RT-PCR experiments and real-time RT-qPCR. Gene set enrichment analysis was performed to explore biological pathways or processes highly enriched with ANRIL downstream genes.