Small nucleolar and small Cajal Body-specific RNAs expression profile of oxidative stressed and normal RPE cells suggests unknown regulative aspects of retinitis pigmentosa etiopathogenesis

Abstract

Recent discoveries on non coding RNAs (ncRNAs) suggest that a huge number of regulative mechanisms of transcription and translation in eukaryotes could represent the key to improve our knowledge on many diseases etiopathogenesis, like Retinitis pigmentosa (RP). Among ncRNAs, small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), and their sub - group Small Cajal Body - specific RNAs (scaRNAs), represent an undiscovered world. We compared snoRNAs expression changes, coming from whole transcriptomes analyses, between two group of Retinal Pigment Epithelial (RPE) cells, treated with the oxidant agent oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) and untreated, respectively, considering four time points (1h, 2h, 4h, 6h). We found 84 snoRNAs, clustered in five groups based on showed altered expressions in treated samples and targeting several ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs), presented their host genes involved in several biochemical pathways. One of them, involving the "silencing activity mediated by the interferon-gamma-activated inhibitor of translation (GAIT) translational control system", seems to be very interesting and only speculated to be associated to RP. SnoRNA expression analysis of oxidative stress induced RPE cells suggested that ncRNAs could play a relevant role in RP etiopathogenesis, regulating pathways directly or indirectly related to the considered disease.