Effects of the microRNA 137 and its connection to psychiatric disorders.

MicroRNAs have been implicated in the pathology not only of cancer, but also of psychiatric diseases, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. As several psychiatric disorders share the same risk genes, we hypothesized that this microRNA could also be associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and that this association to psychiatric disorders might be due to the variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) polymorphism within the internal miR-137 (Imir137) promoter (PMID 18316599; PMID 25154622). To further understand the role of the microRNA 137 in the brain a knock-down of miR-137 expression in SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells was performed followed by expression analysis using a microarray. Investigation of the effects of miR-137 knock-down on gene expression in a human neuronal cell line to identfy potential new miR-137 targets.