Evaluation Of Microrna-486-3p Molecular Signature In Patients With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder that affects behaviour mainly in three aspects 1) social interactions, 2) speech and communication, and 3) interests and activities. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of sophisticated regulators of gene expression, acting as post-transcriptional negative regulators of gene expression that recognize their target mRNAs molecules through complementary base pairing. Understanding miRNAs molecular signature in ASD is a promising tool for the discovery of novel disease-related biomarkers. We measured miR-486-3p expression levels in 30 blood samples from ASD and typically developing children (TDC) using stem-loop RT-qPCR to find out expressed changes associated with ASD. The results indicate a statistically significant down-regulation of miR-486-3p in the ASD group. Additionally, ROC curve analysis was used to demonstrate a significant diagnostic value of miR-486-3p for ASD. Finally, to study the potential modulation in protein-coding gene expression that may be associated with specific miR-486-3p changes, target studies were carried out using a publicly available database, miRWalk. We identified some genes connected with neuronal development and epigenetic processes. All these findings validate differentially expressed miR-486-3p in ASD children as well as support the use of blood tissues as a surrogate to study miRNA expression in ASD.