Construction of potential idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis related microRNA and messenger RNA regulatory network

Abstract

To the Editor: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a kind of lung disease characterized by chronic and progressive pulmonary fibrosis with unknown etiology, whose pathological manifestation is usual interstitial pneumonia. However, the prognosis of IPF was still poor, and the median survival time after diagnosis was about 2 to 3 years. Therefore, it seems important to seek and develop an effective therapeutic modality for IPF. Through base pairs of intramolecular complementary sequences of messenger RNA (mRNA), microRNA (miRNA) plays a key role in RNA silencing and post-transcriptional gene expression regulation. Each miRNA can have multiple target genes and several miRNAs can co-regulate one gene. They also play an important role in organfibrosis, especially in IPF, and the rolemay be related to the pathogenesis of the disease. Construction of potential miRNA-mRNA regulatory network of IPF will help to reveal more comprehensive molecular mechanism of miRNAs in IPF.