Effect of miR-195-5p on cardiomyocyte apoptosis in rats with heart failure by regulating TGF-Œ≤1/Smad3 signaling pathway
Authors: Huaxin Qi
Yan Yang
Lei Huan
Chun Xie
Journal: Bioscience Reports (2020)
Discipline: MOLECULAR BIOLOGY & GENETICS
Keywords: TGF-Œ≤1/Smad3 signaling pathway; apoptosis; cardiomyocyte; heart failure rats; miR-195-5p.
Affiliations: Department of Cardiology, Jinan People's Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan City 271199, Shandong Province, China., Health Examination Center, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan City 250012, Shandong Province, China.

Abstract:  Purpose: The present study set out to investigate the effect of miR-195-5p on cardiomyocyte apoptosis in rats with heart failure (HF) and its mechanism. Methods: HF rat model and hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) cardiomyocyte model were established. miR-195-5p expression and transforming growth factor-Œ≤1 (TGF-Œ≤1)/signal transduction protein (Smad)3 signaling pathway in HF rats and H/R cardiomyocytes were interfered. miR-195-5p expression was tested by Rt-PCR, TGF-Œ≤1/Smad3 signaling pathway related proteins were detected by Western Blot, apoptosis of HF rat cardiomyocytes was tested by TUNEL, and apoptosis of cardiomyocytes induced by H/R was checked by flow cytometry. Results: miR-195-5p was lowly expressed in myocardium of HF rats, while TGF-Œ≤1 and Smad3 proteins were high-expressed. Up-regulating miR-195-5p expression could obviously inhibit cardiomyocyte apoptosis of HF rats, improve their cardiac function, and inhibit activation of TGF-Œ≤1/Smad3 signaling pathway. Up-regulation of miR-195-5p expression or inhibition of TGF-Œ≤1/Smad3 signaling pathway could obviously inhibit H/R-induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis. Dual-luciferase reporter enzyme verified the targeted relationship between miR-195-5p and Smad3. Conclusion: miR-195-5p can inhibit cardiomyocyte apoptosis and improve cardiac function in HF rats by regulating TGF-Œ≤1/Smad3 signaling pathway, which may be a potential target for HF therapy. 

Retracted: Yes

PubPeer comments:
 Some of the Western Blot images unusually seem to share background features between bands. I inverted one example from Figure 4B and increased the contrast in an attempt to illustrate this concern (other readers may be able to do better). I would appreciate if the authors could provide higher resolution original scans to help address this particular example of these concerns. I also wish to note that the email address for the corresponding author does not seem to, um, correspond with their name. *** Inverse closeup  *** Original closeup  *** Full figure  , 
 #1 First of all, we are very grateful to you for your active supervision of our article. We have carefully checked your questions and found that this problem does exist. But this is indeed the result of our experiment, but we did not notice. In order to answer your doubts, we re-provided the WB strips of the other two experiments to the magazine. Ask them to make changes. Thank you again for your careful supervision of our article. , 
 #2 Thank you for responding and congratulations on finding the original data. Could you also post that data here? , 
 https: doi.org 10.1042 BSR-20200566_RET This article is being retracted from Bioscience Reports at the request of the Editor in Chief and Editorial Board following receipt of a notification from a reader, alerting the Journal to unusual repeated background features in the Western blots. The Editorial Office was also contacted by the listed corresponding author, Yan Yang, via an email address that differed to the one included with the submission. Yan Yang confirmed that they were unaware of the submission and publication of the article, and that they did not conduct any part of this research, hence should not have been listed as an author on this paper. The corresponding author of the paper has been contacted via the original email address in the published paper to provide a response to the Editorial Office concerns surrounding the authorship of the paper but has not responded. In light of the concerns raised regarding the Western blots and the authorship of the paper, the Editorial Board stands by the decision to retract the paper. ,