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Emerging Roles of MicroRNAs and Long Noncoding RNAs in Cadmium Toxicity

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Abstract

Metal cadmium (Cd) and its compounds are ubiquitous industrial and environmental pollutants and they have been believed to exert severe damage to multiple organs and tissues. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are the two most common noncoding RNAs and have pivotal roles in various cellular and physiological processes. Since the importance of miRNAs and lncRNAs in Cd toxicity has been widely recognized, we focus our interests on the current researches of miRNAs and lncRNAs as well as their regulation roles in Cd toxicity. In this paper, the keywords “cadmium” in combination with “miRNA” or “LncRNA” or “noncoding RNA” was used to retrieve relevant articles in PubMed, EMbase, CNKI, Wan Fang, and CBM databases. The literatures which contained the above keywords and carried out in animals (in vivo and in vitro) have been collected, collated, analyzed, and summarized. Our summary results showed that hundreds of miRNAs and lncRNAs are involved in the Cd toxicity, which have been demonstrated as multiple organ injury, reproductive toxicity, malignant transformation, and abnormal repair of DNA damage. In this paper, we also discussed the blank in present research field of Cd toxicity as well as suggested some ideas for future study in Cd toxicity.

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Funding

This review was supported by grant from the Dali University PhD Research Initiation Fund Project 2018 (KYBS2018006) and China Southwest Collaborative Innovation Center for Entomoceutics Open Project in 2018 (NO. CIC1802) to Shiyan GU.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Faculty of Public Health, Dali University, No. 22, Wanhua Road, Dali, 671000, Yunnan, People’s Republic of China

    Shiyan Gu, Tengjiao Qu & Zuoshun He

  2. Qujing Medical College, Qujing, Yunnan, China

    Jiao Dai

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  1. Shiyan Gu
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  2. Jiao Dai
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Shiyan-GU and Jiao-DAI wrote the manuscript. Shiyan Gu, Zuoshun-HE, and Tengjiao-QU revised the manuscript and checked the references.

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Correspondence to Shiyan Gu or Zuoshun He.

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Gu, S., Dai, J., Qu, T. et al. Emerging Roles of MicroRNAs and Long Noncoding RNAs in Cadmium Toxicity. Biol Trace Elem Res 195, 481–490 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-019-01859-4

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