MicroRNA-638 inhibits cell proliferation by targeting phospholipase D1 in human gastric carcinoma

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a type of small non-coding RNAs that are often play important roles in carcinogenesis, but the carcinogenic mechanism of miRNAs is still unclear. This study will investigate the function and the mechanism of miR-638 in carcinoma (GC). The expression of miR-638 in GC and the DNA copy number of miR-638 were detected by real-time PCR. The effect of miR-638 on cell proliferation was measured by counting kit-8 assay. Different assays, including bioinformatics algorithms (TargetScan and miRanda), luciferase report assay and Western blotting, were used to identify the target gene of miR-638 in GC. The expression of miR-638 target gene in clinical CRC tissues was also validated by immunohistochemical assay. From this research, we found that miR-638 was downregulated in GC tissues compared with corresponding noncancerous tissues (NCTs), and the DNA copy number of miR-638 was lower in GC than NCTs, which may induce the corresponding downregulation of miR-638 in GC. Ectopic expression of miR-638 inhibited GC cell growth in vitro. Subsequently, we identified that PLD1 is the target gene of miR-638 in GC, and silencing PLD1 expression phenocopied the inhibitory effect of miR-638 on GC cell proliferation. Furthermore, we observed that PLD1 was overexpressed in GC tissues, and high expression of PLD1 in GC predicted poor overall survival. In summary, we revealed that miR-638 functions as a tumor suppressor in GC through inhibiting PLD1. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13238-015-0187-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.