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Exosomes and other extracellular vesicles (commonly referred to as EVs) have generated a lot of attention for their potential applications in both diagnostics and therapeutics. The contents of these vesicles are the subject of intense research, and the relatively recent discovery of RNA inside EVs has raised interest in the biological function of these RNAs as well as their potential as biomarkers for cancer and other diseases. Traditional ultracentrifugation-based protocols to isolate EVs are labor-intensive and subject to significant variability. Various attempts to develop methods with robust, reproducible performance have not yet been completely successful. Here, we report the development and characterization of a spin column-based method for the isolation of total RNA from EVs in serum and plasma. This method isolates highly pure RNA of equal or higher quantity compared to ultracentrifugation, with high specificity for vesicular over non-vesicular RNA. The spin columns have a capacity to handle up to 4 mL sample volume, enabling detection of low-abundance transcripts in serum and plasma. We conclude that the method is an improvement over traditional methods in providing a faster, more standardized way to achieve reliable high quality RNA preparations from EVs in biofluids such as serum and plasma. The first kit utilizing this new method has recently been made available by Qiagen as \"exoRNeasy Serum/Plasma Maxi Kit\".

12 microRNA expression profiling platforms are compared for their reproducibility, sensitivity, accuracy and specificity, and the strengths and weaknesses of each platform are discussed. MicroRNAs are important negative regulators of protein-coding gene expression and have been studied intensively over the past years. Several measurement platforms have been developed to determine relative miRNA abundance in biological samples using different technologies such as small RNA sequencing, reverse transcription–quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and (microarray) hybridization. In this study, we systematically compared 12 commercially available platforms for analysis of microRNA expression. We measured an identical set of 20 standardized positive and negative control samples, including human universal reference RNA, human brain RNA and titrations thereof, human serum samples and synthetic spikes from microRNA family members with varying homology. We developed robust quality metrics to objectively assess platform performance in terms of reproducibility, sensitivity, accuracy, specificity and concordance of differential expression. The results indicate that each method has its strengths and weaknesses, which help to guide informed selection of a quantitative microRNA gene expression platform for particular study goals.

In human body fluids, microRNA (miRNA) can be found as circulating cell-free miRNA (cfmiRNA), as well as secreted into extracellular vesicles (EVmiRNA). miRNAs are being intensively evaluated as minimally invasive liquid biopsy biomarkers in patients with cancer. The growing interest in developing clinical assays for circulating miRNA necessitates careful consideration of confounding effects of preanalytical and analytical parameters. By using reverse transcription quantitative real-time PCR and next-generation sequencing (NGS), we compared extraction efficiencies of 5 different protocols for cfmiRNA and 2 protocols for EVmiRNA isolation in a multicentric manner. The efficiency of the different extraction methods was evaluated by measuring exogenously spiked cel-miR-39 and 6 targeted miRNAs in plasma from 20 healthy individuals. There were significant differences between the tested methods. Although column-based extraction methods were highly effective for the isolation of endogenous miRNA, phenol extraction combined with column-based miRNA purification and ultracentrifugation resulted in lower quality and quantity of isolated miRNA. Among all extraction methods, the ubiquitously expressed miR-16 was represented with high abundance when compared with other targeted miRNAs. In addition, the use of miR-16 as an endogenous control for normalization of quantification cycle values resulted in a decreased variability of column-based cfmiRNA extraction methods. Cluster analysis of normalized NGS counts clearly indicated a method-dependent bias. The choice of plasma miRNA extraction methods affects the selection of potential miRNA marker candidates and mechanistic interpretation of results, which should be done with caution, particularly across studies using different protocols.

Background: Among emerging circulating biomarkers, miRNA has the potential to detect lung cancer and follow the course of the disease. However, miRNA analysis deserves further standardization before implementation into clinical trials or practice. Here, we performed international ring experiments to explore (pre)-analytical factors relevant to the outcome of miRNA blood tests in the context of the EU network CANCER-ID. Methods: Cell-free (cfmiRNA) and extracellular vesicle-derived miRNA (EVmiRNA) were extracted using the miRNeasy Serum/Plasma Advanced, and the ExoRNeasy Maxi kit, respectively, in a plasma cohort of 27 NSCLC patients and 20 healthy individuals. Extracted miRNA was investigated using small RNA sequencing and hybridization platforms. Validation of the identified miRNA candidates was performed using quantitative PCR. Results: We demonstrate the highest read counts in healthy individuals and NSCLC patients using QIAseq. Moreover, QIAseq showed 15.9% and 162.9% more cfmiRNA and EVmiRNA miRNA counts, respectively, in NSCLC patients compared to healthy control samples. However, a systematic comparison of selected miRNAs revealed little agreement between high-throughput platforms, thus some miRNAs are detected with one technology, but not with the other. Adding to this, 35% (9 of 26) of selected miRNAs in the cfmiRNA and 42% (11 of 26) in the EVmiRNA fraction were differentially expressed by at least one qPCR platform; about half of the miRNAs (54%) were concordant for both platforms. Conclusions: Changing of (pre)-analytical methods of miRNA analysis has a significant impact on blood test results and is therefore a major confounding factor. In addition, to confirm miRNA biomarker candidates screening studies should be followed by targeted validation using an independent platform or technology.

To better define the control of immune system regulation, we generated an atlas of microRNA (miRNA) expression from 63 mouse immune cell populations and connected these signatures with assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing (ATAC–seq), chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing (ChIP–seq) and nascent RNA profiles to establish a map of miRNA promoter and enhancer usage in immune cells. miRNA complexity was relatively low, with >90% of the miRNA compartment of each population comprising <75 miRNAs; however, each cell type had a unique miRNA signature. Integration of miRNA expression with chromatin accessibility revealed putative regulatory elements for differentially expressed miRNAs, including miR-21a, miR-146a and miR-223. The integrated maps suggest that many miRNAs utilize multiple promoters to reach high abundance and identified dominant and divergent miRNA regulatory elements between lineages and during development that may be used by clustered miRNAs, such as miR-99a/let-7c/miR-125b, to achieve distinct expression. These studies, with web-accessible data, help delineate the cis -regulatory elements controlling miRNA signatures of the immune system. Brown and colleagues generated an atlas of miRNA expression profiles from primary mouse immune cell populations and connected these signatures with ATAC–seq, ChIP–seq and nascent RNA profiles to establish a map of miRNA promoter and enhancer usage in immune cells.

Nat. Methods 11, 809–815 (2014); published online 29 June 2014; corrected after print 30 July 2014 In the version of this article initially published, the author Linda Wong was omitted from the author list. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

High-throughput sequencing is increasingly favoured to assay the presence and abundance of micro RNAs (miRNAs) in biological samples, even from low RNA amounts, and a number of commercial vendors now offer kits that allow miRNA sequencing from sub-nanogram (ng) inputs. However, although biases introduced during library preparation have been documented, the relative performance of current reagent kits has not been investigated in detail. Here, six commercial kits capable of handling <100ng total RNA input were used for library preparation, performed by kit manufactures, on synthetic miRNAs of known quantities and human biological total RNA samples. We compared the performance of miRNA detection sensitivity, reliability, titration response and the ability to detect differentially expressed miRNAs. In addition, we assessed the use of unique molecular identifiers sequence (UMI) tags in one kit. We observed differences in detection sensitivity and ability to identify differentially expressed miRNAs between the kits, but none were able to detect the full repertoire of expected miRNAs. The reliability within the replicates of all kits was good, while larger differences were observed between the kits, although none could accurately quantify the majority of miRNAs. UMI tags, at least within the input ranges tested, offered little advantage to improve data utility. In conclusion, biases in miRNA abundance are heavily influenced by the kit used for library preparation, suggesting that comparisons of datasets prepared by different procedures should be made with caution. This article is intended to assist researchers select the most appropriate kit for their experimental conditions.