miRNA Mimics & Inhibitors

Figure 1. mirVana miRNA mimics demonstrate high specificity. HeLa cells were transfected with one of six different mirVana miRNA mimics at 3 nM concentration and a corresponding reporter plasmid. The fold change in reporter gene expression for each miRNA mimic strand was determined by measuring expression in the presence of mimic relative to that of a negative control (set at 1.0). Each plasmid has the reporter gene cloned both in forward orientation (Fwd) to measure activity of the miRNA mimic mature strand, and in reverse/complement orientation (Rev) to test activity of the passenger strand. For all six mimics, mature strand activity is high (reporter gene expression reduced 5- to 10-fold compared with negative control), and passenger strand activity is low or absent (similar to negative control).

Figure 2. mirVana miRNA inhibitors are more potent than those from leading competitors. mirVana miRNA inhibitors and two other commercially available let-7 inhibitors were each transfected into HeLa cells at 10 nM concentration using Lipofectamine RNAiMAX reagent. Twenty-four hours later, HMGA2 mRNA levels (a natural target of the let-7 microRNA) were measured by qRT-PCR using TaqMan assays.

Figure 3. mirVana miRNA inhibitors effectively suppress miRNA in vivo. miR-122 or Negative Control #1 mirVana miRNA inhibitors were complexed with Invivofectamine 2.0 reagent and injected into the tail veins of Balb-C mice on three consecutive days at 7 mg per kg body weight. Twenty-four hours after the last injection, expression levels of four natural targets of miR-122 were measured in the liver using TaqMan assays. Significant up-regulation of all four mRNAs was detected in mice treated with miR-122 inhibitor, as compared with mice that received no treatment or the negative control. Results indicate that mirVana miRNA inhibitors were efficiently delivered to the liver with Invivofectamine 2.0, where they inactivated miR-122, leading to up-regulation of genes naturally suppressed by miR-122.