Open Access
ARTICLE
LncRNA NKILA suppresses airway hyper reactivity via interfering the facilitation of MUC5AC and MUC5B mediated by GALNT2
YONGLI ZHANG1,#, YIZHAN CAO2,#, BO ZHU3, YANNI JIANG3, PENGCHONG LIANG3,*
1 Intensive Medicine Departments, Central Hospital of Baoji City, Baoji, 721000, China
2 Emergency Department, Tangdu Hospital of Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, 710000, China
3 Emergency Department, Central Hospital of Baoji City, Baoji, 721000, China
* Address correspondence to: Pengchong Liang,
# Yongli Zhang and Yizhan Cao have contributed equally to this work.
BIOCELL 2021, 45(1), 41-48. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2021.010454
Received 05 March 2020; Accepted 18 May 2020; Issue published 26 January 2021
Abstract
Glycosylation of mucins mediated by N-acetylgalactosaminyltransferases (GALNTs) is closely related to
respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In addition, long non-coding
RNAs (LncRNAs) participate in physiological and pathological processes through various epigenetic mechanisms. In
this study, we found that a novel LncRNA named NKILA combined with multiple mucins and GALNTs potentially
by several bioinformatics methods, and we used quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) to detect the expressions of
NKILA, MUC5AC, MUC5B, and GALNT2 mRNA in 50 cases of asthma samples and 19 cases of normal samples,
whose results showed that the expression of NKILA was significantly decreased in asthmatic samples, negatively
correlated with the severity of asthma and the expressions of MUC5AC and MUC5B, while GALNT2 was
significantly increased in asthmatic tissues, and positively correlated with the severity of asthma and the expressions
of MUC5AC and MUC5B. In vitro, we used transient transfection technology to overexpress or interfere with NKILA
and GALNT2 and then detected the expressions of MUC5AC and MUC5B via RT-qPCR and Western blot, which
demonstrated GALNT2 can promote the expressions of MUC5AC and MUC5B protein, while NKILA could inhibit
this effect. Furthermore, co-immunoprecipitation results showed that GALNT2 could bind to MUC5AC and MUC5B
protein. RNA immunoprecipitation and RNA pull-down experiments showed that NKILA could bind to GALNT2.
These evidences suggested that there are correlations among the expression of NKILA, GALNT2, MUC5AC, and
MUC5B proteins in asthmatic patients. Mechanically, we concluded that NKILA can suppress the O-linked
glycosylation of MUC5AC and MUC5B proteins by binding to GALNT2 and inhibit the expression of MUC5AC and
MUC5B proteins. Our researches provided a potential therapeutic target for AHR.
Keywords
Cite This Article
ZHANG, Y., CAO, Y., ZHU, B., JIANG, Y., LIANG, P. (2021). LncRNA NKILA suppresses airway hyper reactivity via interfering the facilitation of MUC5AC and MUC5B mediated by GALNT2.
BIOCELL, 45(1), 41–48. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2021.010454