Protecting Pax6 3′ UTR from MicroRNA-7 Partially Restores PAX6 in Islets from an Aniridia Mouse Model
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Aniridia is a rare congenital syndrome that is associated with reduced visual acuity and progressive loss of vision. Aniridia patients may also develop systemic health issues associated with defects in the pancreas, digestive, and central nervous systems. The spectrum of symptoms associated with aniridia is due to haploinsufficiency of the paired box 6 gene (PAX6) and its role in the development and maintenance of the affected tissues. Here, we isolated pancreatic islets from mice heterozygous for Pax6 to test whether a Pax6-specific miRNA suppression (target protector) strategy can restore PAX6 protein levels. We show that miR-7 and miR-375 target specific sites within the Pax6 3′ UTR in a mouse pancreatic β-insulinoma cell line. Tough decoys (Tuds) against miR-7 and miR-375 increase expression of a mouse Pax6 3′ UTR luciferase reporter and increase PAX6 protein levels in these cells. Finally, we demonstrate that the shielding of the miR-7 binding site with a target protector restores PAX6 protein levels in the Pax6 heterozygous islets. The data presented here represent a proof of concept for RNA-based therapy for the progressive defects associated with aniridia and suggest the target protector approach may be a useful therapeutic strategy for other haploinsufficiency diseases. Aniridia is a rare congenital syndrome that is associated with reduced visual acuity and progressive loss of vision. Aniridia patients may also develop systemic health issues associated with defects in the pancreas, digestive, and central nervous systems. The spectrum of symptoms associated with aniridia is due to haploinsufficiency of the paired box 6 gene (PAX6) and its role in the development and maintenance of the affected tissues. Here, we isolated pancreatic islets from mice heterozygous for Pax6 to test whether a Pax6-specific miRNA suppression (target protector) strategy can restore PAX6 protein levels. We show that miR-7 and miR-375 target specific sites within the Pax6 3′ UTR in a mouse pancreatic β-insulinoma cell line. Tough decoys (Tuds) against miR-7 and miR-375 increase expression of a mouse Pax6 3′ UTR luciferase reporter and increase PAX6 protein levels in these cells. Finally, we demonstrate that the shielding of the miR-7 binding site with a target protector restores PAX6 protein levels in the Pax6 heterozygous islets. The data presented here represent a proof of concept for RNA-based therapy for the progressive defects associated with aniridia and suggest the target protector approach may be a useful therapeutic strategy for other haploinsufficiency diseases.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".