BACKGROUND: Renal fibrosis (RF) is a crucial pathological factor in the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) to end-stage renal failure. The role of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) in CKD has been researched recently. tRNA-derived fragments (tRFs) constitute a class of small ncRNAs originating from tRNAs. To date, the function of tRFs in RF remains unexplored. METHODS: Human small RNA microarray analysis was performed to identify dysregulated tRFs in urine-derived renal tubular epithelial cells from patients with RF. RT-PCR was used for validation in clinical samples. Hydroxylamine-mediated protein precipitation mass spectrometry (Hypro-MS), parallel reaction monitoring (PRM), and antisense oligonucleotide (ASO)-mediated knockdown were used to investigate the interaction between tRF-1-ArgTCG-1-1 and β-catenin and its functional role in TGF-β1-treated HK-2 cells. RESULTS: . CONCLUSIONS: Overall, these findings suggest that renal tubular epithelial cells tRF-1-ArgTCG-1-1 play a key role in RF and that the tRF-1-ArgTCG-1-1/β-catenin pathway is a potential therapeutic target for CKD and RF.
Jin et al. (Mon,) studied this question.