Downregulation of long non-coding RNA H19 promotes P19CL6 cells proliferation and inhibits apoptosis during late-stage cardiac differentiation via miR-19b-modulated Sox6

Background: Regulating cardiac differentiation to maintain normal heart development and function is very important. At present, biological functions of H19 in cardiac differentiation is not completely clear. Methods: To explore the functional effect of H19 during cardiac differentiation. Expression levels of early cardiac-specific markers Nkx-2.5 and GATA4, cardiac contractile protein genes alpha-MHC and MLC-2v were determined by qRT-PCR and western lot. The levels of lncRNA H19 and miR-19b were detected by qRT-PCR. We further predicted the binding sequence of H19 and miR-19b by online softwares starBase v2.0 and TargetScan. The biological functions of H19 and Sox6 were evaluated by CCK-8 kit, cell cycle and apoptosis assay and caspase-3 activity. Results: The expression levels of alpha-MHC, MLC-2v and H19 were upregulated, and miR-19b was downregulated significantly in mouse P19CL6 cells at the late stage of cardiac differentiation. Biological function analysis showed that knockdown of H19 promoted cell proliferation and inhibits cell apoptosis. H19 suppressed miR-19b expression and miR-19b targeted Sox6, which inhibited cell proliferation and promoted apoptosis in P19CL6 cells during late-stage cardiac differentiation. Importantly, Sox6 overexpression could reverse the positive effects of H19 knockdown on P19CL6 cells. Conclusion: Downregulation of H19 promoted cell proliferation and inhibited cell apoptosis during late-stage cardiac differentiation by regulating the negative role of miR-19b in Sox6 expression, which suggested that the manipulation of H19 expression could serve as a potential strategy for heart disease.