miR-26a-5p Regulates Adipocyte Differentiation via Directly Targeting ACSL3 in Adipocytes

ABSTRACT

Preadipocytes become mature adipocytes after proliferation and differentiation, and although many genes and microRNAs have been identified in intramuscular fat, their physiological function and regulatory mechanisms remain largely unexplored. miR-26a-5p has been reported to be related to fat deposition, but its effect on porcine preadipocyte differentiation has not been explored. In this study, bioinformatics analysis and luciferase reporter assay identified that miR-26a-5p binds to the 3ʹUTR of Acyl-CoA synthetase long-chain family member 3 (ACSL3) mRNA. The model for porcine intramuscular preadipocyte differentiation was established to explore the function of miR-6a-5p-ACSL3 on adipocyte differentiation. ACSL3 knockdown markedly reduced the triglycerides (TG) content of cells, as well as the mRNA levels of adipogenic marker genes (PPAR-γ and SREBP-1c). The number of lipid droplets in cells transfected with a miR-26a-5p mimic is significantly reduced, consistent with ACSL3 knockdown results, while the miR-26a-5p inhibitor resulted in opposite results. Taken together, miR-26a-5p is a repressor of porcine preadipocyte differentiation and plays a vital role in ACSL3-mediated adipogenesis.

KEYWORDS:

• miR-26a-5p
• ACSL3
• porcine preadipocyte differentiation
• adipogenesis

Abbreviations

IMF, intramuscular fat; ACSL, long-chain acyl-CoA synthetase; ACSL3, acyl-CoA synthetase long-chain family member 3; GO, Gene Ontology; KEGG, Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes; CoA, coenzyme-A.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary files.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/21623945.2023.2166345

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research Project (2021YFD1301203), the Agricultural Animal Breeding Project of Shandong Province (2020LZGC012, 2021LZGC001 and 2022LZGC003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32172711), the open research fund of the Key Laboratory of genetics, breeding and reproduction of plateau mountain animals of the Ministry of Education (Guizhou University) (QJH KY Zi [2022] No. 371), and the 2020 Research Program of Sanya Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City (SKJC-2020-02-007).