Differential Expression of MicroRNAs between Eutopic and Ectopic Endometrium in Ovarian Endometriosis

Nicoletta Filigheddu, Ilaria Gregnanin, Paolo E Porporato, Daniela Surico, Beatrice Perego, Licia Galli, Claudia Patrignani, Andrea Graziani, Nicola Surico, N Surico
Journal of biomedicine & biotechnology · 2010 · vol. 2010 , pp. 1–29 · doi:10.1155/2010/369549 · PMID:20300586 · PMC2837904 · W2044038984
article OA: gold CC0 ⤵ 122 in-corpus citations
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

Microarray and RT-PCR analysis identified 50 differentially expressed microRNAs between eutopic and ectopic endometrium in ovarian endometriosis patients, whose predicted targets implicate them in endometriosis pathogenesis.

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⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-12 · read from full text ⓘ

This study compared microRNA expression profiles between paired eutopic and ectopic endometrium from 16 women undergoing surgery for chronic pelvic pain or infertility, using miRNA microarrays on samples from three patients followed by validation with real-time RT-PCR in the remaining 13 patients. The microarray identified 84 differentially expressed miRNAs (50 with at least a twofold change), and five selected miRNAs (hsa-miR-200a, hsa-miR-200b, hsa-miR-200c, hsa-miR-182, and hsa-miR-202) showed differential expression by RT-PCR, with several miRNAs decreased in ectopic tissue and hsa-miR-202 increased. The authors report no significant differences by endometrioma severity (moderate vs severe), which they note may reflect limited group size. Predicted miRNA targets (shared by two algorithms) were used in Ingenuity Pathway Analysis to identify signaling networks and biological functions including processes previously implicated in endometriosis. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it directly identifies differential microRNA expression between eutopic and ectopic endometrium in ovarian endometriosis.

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Abstract

Endometriosis, defined as the presence of endometrial tissue outside the uterus, is a common gynecological disease with poorly understood pathogenesis. MicroRNAs are members of a class of small noncoding RNA molecules that have a critical role in posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression by repression of target mRNAs translation. We assessed differentially expressed microRNAs in ectopic endometrium compared with eutopic endometrium in 3 patients through microarray analysis. We identified 50 microRNAs differentially expressed and the differential expression of five microRNAs was validated by real-time RT-PCR in other 13 patients. We identified in silico their predicted targets, several of which match the genes that have been identified to be differentially expressed in ectopic versus eutopic endometrium in studies of gene expression. A functional analysis of the predicted targets indicates that several of these are involved in molecular pathways implicated in endometriosis, thus strengthening the hypothesis of the role of microRNAs in this pathology.
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Section

MicroRNAs are predicted to regulate a large fraction of protein-coding genes, as computational analysis reveals that an average miRNA could have as many as 100 or more target genes. On the other hand, a single gene may have target sites for several distinct miRNAs, allowing a fine tuning of gene expression by miRNAs. In the present study, we used miRNA microarray technology to identify the miRNAs differentially expressed in paired eutopic/ectopic endometrium from the same patients and bioinformatics tools to identify their predicted targets as well as the molecular networks and the biological functions they may affect. Comparing miRNA expression profiles among the different subjects, we identified 50 miRNAs differentially expressed in ectopic versus eutopic samples. Several of these miRNAs were also reported to be differentially expressed in two recent studies [ 62 , 63 ], although with a modulation occasionally discordant from our results. This, joint to a notable accordance between their predicted targets and the genes reported to be differentially expressed in two studies of gene expression [ 23 , 24 ], consolidates the hypothesis of a possible role of miRNAs in the pathogenesis of endometriosis. The miRNAs-predicted targets were identified by the intersection of the results from two different search algorithms, and the biological functions the differentially expressed miRNA may affect were identified by Onto-Express and IPA software. Functional analysis, performed using IPA software, was carried out uploading either the predicted targets or the differentially expressed miRNAs, thus using different databases for miRNA targets. As expected, the different algorithms used to predict miRNA targets led to the identification of different molecular networks. Still, in both cases, the identified networks contained several transcripts known to be implicated in endometriosis and with their main biological functions linked to the disease. Since the targets of miRNAs are just predictions based on mathematical algorithms, the choice of the algorithm may radically modify on the whole the list of the predicted target genes and that of the molecular networks they belong to. For this reason, the validation of miRNA targets in vitro, in a cellular system, is essential to evaluate the contribution of each miRNA to the overall modulation of gene expression.

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Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Endometrium MicroRNAs Ovarian Diseases Adult Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometrium Female Gene Expression Gene Expression Humans MicroRNAs Middle Aged Ovarian Diseases Ovarian Diseases

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