[Animal modeling] - Small intestine metabolomics study of a mouse model of oral cancer subcutaneous transplantation overexpressing miR-181a-5p

  Objective: To analyze the effects of overexpression of miR-181a-5p on metabolites and metabolite groups in the small intestine of subcutaneous transplanted oral cancer mice by detecting changes in metabolites and metabolic pathways.

  The method experiment was divided into three groups: control group, negative control (NC) group, and over expression of miR-181a-5p (OE) group. Different groups of treated cell suspensions were subcutaneously injected into the upper right inguinal region of M-NSG severely immunodeficient female mice to construct a mouse model of oral cancer subcutaneous transplantation. Record the weight changes of mice on time, perform HE staining on the small intestine tissue of mice, and observe the pathological changes in each group. Using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography tandem time-of-flight mass spectrometry and tandem Orbitrap mass spectrometry to detect metabolites in the small intestine of NC group, OE group, and Control group mice, XCMS was used to pre analyze the raw data, quality evaluation sample data was used to identify differential metabolites between Control group and NC group, NC group and OE group, and KEGG enrichment analysis was performed to obtain differential metabolic pathways.

  As a result, a total of 170 differential metabolites were identified in the small intestine tissues of the Control and NC groups. The significant signaling pathways enriched in metabolites include choline metabolism, alanine, aspartic acid, and glutamate metabolism γ- Aminobutyric acid (GABA) synaptic metabolism, glycerophospholipid metabolism, cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) signaling pathway metabolism, cancer center carbon metabolism, and nicotinic acid and nicotine amine metabolism pathways. Compared with the OE group, 16 differential metabolites with VIP (variable importance in the project)>2 were detected in the small intestine of mice in the NC group. Significant differential metabolites included glycerophosphocholine, palmitic acid, 3-hydroxybutyryl carnitine β- Hydroxybutyric acid, etc. The significant differential pathway enriched by metabolites is the choline metabolism pathway.

  Conclusion: Subcutaneous transplantation of oral cancer can cause changes in metabolites in the small intestine of mice, mainly altering metabolites related to energy metabolism in the small intestine. Overexpression of miR-181a-5p affects small intestine metabolites in mice with subcutaneous transplantation of oral cancer, and the metabolite enrichment pathway is the choline metabolism pathway.