Downregulation of microRNA-211 is involved in expression of preferentially expressed antigen of melanoma in melanoma cells

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs whose aberrations are involved in the initiation and progression of human cancers. To seek unique miRNAs contributing to melanoma tumorigenesis, we investigated the global miRNA expression profile of 7 melanoma cell lines and 3 primary cultures of neonatal human epidermal melanocytes (NHEMs) using the stem-loop real-time PCR method. We found 7 miRNAs that were commonly downregulated and 18 that were upregulated in all of the melanoma cell lines in comparison with the 3 primary cultures of NHEMs. We focused on one commonly downregulated miRNA (miR-211), and analyzed its relationship to the expression of preferentially expressed antigen of melanoma (PRAME) protein, which is a potential target of miR-211. We found that all melanoma cell lines exhibited marked downregulation of miR-211 and upregulation of PRAME mRNA/protein expression in comparison with NHEMs (P < 0.05). A significant inverse correlation between miR-211 and PRAME protein expression was found in melanoma cell lines and primary cultures of NHEMs (correlation coefficient of -0.733, P < 0.05). We demonstrated that overexpression of miR-211 induced a reduction of PRAME protein levels, and confirmed the target specificity between miR-211 and PRAME by luciferase reporter assay. These results suggest that downregulation of miR-211 may be partly involved in aberrant expression of the PRAME protein in melanoma cells.