miRNA expression profiling uncovers a role of miR‐302b‐3p in regulating skin fibroblasts senescence

Abstract Numbers of emerging evidence suggest that variable microRNA (miRNA) expression facilitates the aging process. In this study, we distinguished aberrant miRNA expression in aged skin and explored the biological functions and potential mechanism of upregulated miR‐302b‐3p. At first, miRNA microarray analysis was examined to explore miRNA expression profiling in the skin of aging mice model by D ‐galactose ( d ‐gal) injection. We identified 29 aberrant miRNAs in aged mice skin. Next, KEGG enrichment analysis was conducted with DIANA‐miPath v3.0, which was revealed that enrichment pathways involved in such processes as extracellular matrix‐receptor interaction, MAPK signaling pathway, and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway. The target genes of deregulated miRNAs were predicted from four bioinformatic algorithms (miRDB, Targetscan, miRwalk, and Tarbase). The interaction network of miRNAs and their targets were visualized using Cytoscape software. As a result, we found that some hub genes (including JNK2, AKT1/2/3, PAK7, TRPS1, BCL2L11, and IKZF2) were targeted by 12 potential miRNAs (including miR‐302b‐3p, miR‐291a‐5p, miR‐139‐3p, miR‐467c‐3p, miR‐186‐3p, etc.). Subsequently, we identified five upregulated miRNA via quantitative polymerase chain reaction and all of them were confirmed increased significantly in aged skin tissues compared with young control tissues. Among them, high expression of miR‐302b‐3p was verified in both aged skin tissues and senescence fibroblasts. Furthermore, miR‐302b‐3p mimic accelerated skin fibroblast senescence and suppressed the longevity‐associated gene Sirtuin 1(Sirt1) expression, whereas miR‐302b‐3p inhibitor could delay skin fibroblast senescence and contribute Sirt1 expression. In addition, we demonstrated that c‐Jun N‐terminal kinase 2(JNK2) is a direct target of miR‐302b‐3p by a luciferase reporter assay. An inverse correlation was verified in fibroblasts between miR‐302b‐3p and JNK2. Most importantly, siRNA JNK2 confirmed that low expression of JNK2 could accelerate fibroblasts senescence. In conclusion, our results indicated that overexpressed miR‐302b‐3p plays an important biological role in accelerating skin aging process via directly targeting JNK2 gene.