LncRNAs expression signatures of cumulus cells isolated from PCOS patients revealed by microarray

Our study is the first one to determine genome-wide lncRNAs expression patterns in cumulus cells of PCOS patients by microarray. The results displayed that clusters of lncRNAs (n=623) were aberrantly expressed in PCOS patients compared with non-PCOS patients. Many differentially expressed lncRNAs were transcribed from regions on chromosome 2 and classified into enhancer-like lncRNA subgroup. XLOC_011402 (PWRN2) was found for the first time that it was not only expressed in testis but also in cumulus cells. All the results revealed that lncRNAs differentially expressed in cumulus cells may exert a partial or key role in hormone abnormalities of PCOS patients and maybe impact on oocyte development. Taken together, this study may provide potential targets for further treatment of PCOS and novel insights into oocyte development. we described lncRNAs profiles in cumulus cells isolated from ten patients (5 PCOS and 5 non-PCOS patients) by microarray. with abundant and varied probes accounting about 39,000 human lncRNAs in our microarray, the number of lncRNAs that expressed at a certain level could be detected is 24292. From the data, we found 623 lncRNAs were significantly up-regulated or down-reguated, which could be used to discriminate PCOS from non-PCOS cumulus cells (≥2-fold). Of them, the up-regulated lncRNAs (n=620) were more common than down-regualted ones (n=3). In addition, the distribution of the differentially expressed lncRNAs was unbalance in all human chromosomes, i.e. there are 74 lncRNAs were transcribed from regions on chromosome 2 while only 7 lncRNAs were transcripts from regions on chromosome 22. Further analysis showed the differentially expressed lncRNAs were classified into three subgroups: HOX loci lncRNAs (n=2), Enhancer-like lncRNAs (n=87) and lincRNAs (n=6). Five differentially expressed lncRNAs (XLOC_011402, ENST00000454271, ENST00000433673, ENST00000450294, and ENST00000432431) were selected to validate of the microarray results by quantitative RT-PCR in both the original samples for the microarray analysis and a cohort of cumulus cells samples isolated from the additional 30 PCOS and 30 non-PCOS patients. All the qRT-PCR results were consistent with the microarray data.