LncRNA-MALAT1 influences myocardial infarction by regulating miR-30a/beclin-1 pathway.

OBJECTIVE Long non-coding ribonucleic acid-metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (lncRNA-MALAT1) has been confirmed as a key factor involving in various physiological and pathological processes. The present study aims to investigate whether lncRNA-MALAT1 affects the process of myocardial infarction (MI) in rats by regulating the micro RNA (miR-30a)/Beclin-1 (BECN1) pathway. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twelve healthy male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly selected and equally divided into sham-operation group and MI group. In MI group, a rat model of acute MI (AMI) was established by ligating the left anterior descending coronary artery. Rats in sham-operation group were set as the control. The messenger RNA (mRNA) expression levels of lncRNA-MALAT1, miR-30a, and BECN1 in the infarcted myocardial tissues were detected via real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The rat myocardial cell line H9c2 was cultured in vitro and then transfected with vectors of lncRNA-MALAT1, miR-30a, and BECN1. After that, qRT-PCR was performed to measure mRNA levels of lncRNA-MALAT1, miR-30a, and BECN1 in H9c2 cells. The protein level of BECN1 in cells was determined via Western blotting (WB) assay. RESULTS Expression levels of lncRNA-MALAT1 and BECN1 in the rat myocardium of MI group were up-regulated markedly (p<0.01), while miR-30a was down-regulated notably (p<0.01) compared with those in sham-operation group. After H9c2 cells were transfected with overexpression vectors of lncRNA-MALAT1 or miR-30a, expression levels of miR-30a (p<0.01) and BECN1 (p<0.01) were remarkably down-regulated, respectively. CONCLUSIONS LncRNA-MALAT1 up-regulates the expression of BECN1 by binding to miR-30a, thereby increasing the level of cell autophagy after MI.