Identification of skin-related lncRNAs as potential biomarkers that are involved in Wnt pathways in keloids

The long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) regulating encoding transcripts/genes involved in Wnt signalling pathway in keloids is largely unclear. We used a pathway-focused lncRNA microarray to detect the differentiated expression profiles of both lncRNAs and genes involved in Wnt pathway, thus a total of 116 Wnt-targeted genes and 69 Wnt-related lncRNAs aberrantly expressed in keloids were initially identified. A stepwise bioinformatics was further performed to find skin-related lncRNA/gene pairs in Wnt pathway in keloids. Firstly, an lncRNA/gene co-expression network with clustered functional modules was constructed; simultaneously, 114 Wnt-genes regarding to dermis were online enriched using Phenotype Enrichment. Secondly, 17 skin-related keloid-aberrant Wnt-genes were acquired by overlapping the 114 skin-related Wnt-genes with the 116 keloid-aberrant Wnt-genes. Thirdly, after co-expression coefficient of each lncRNA/gene profile being ranked respectively, 11 top co-expressed lncRNAs characterized with the highest co-expression coefficients to the 17 genes were identified. Fourthly, seven of the 11 top co-expressed lncRNAs exhibiting array-detected aberrant expression in keloids, together with their 12 most interactive Wnt-genes, were selected to undergo in-pair intracellularly quantitative PCR validation in keloids. As a result, four lncRNAs including CACNA1G-AS1, HOXA11-AS, LINC00312 and RP11-91I11.1 with their six paired Wnt-genes undergoing both array-and-qPCR as well as lncRNA-and-gene double validation were finally identified as skin-related lncRNA/gene pairs that involved in Wnt signalling pathway in keloids. In conclusion, in-depth exploration on these easily-accessible lncRNAs in keloids might aid to find the novel target on how to maintain highly recurrent tumours benign via Wnt-involved network regulation.