The T cell concentration was adjusted to 1 × 106/ml in RPMI-1640 containing 10% heat-inactivated fetal bovine serum (FBS), 2 mmol/l L-glutamine, penicillin (100 U/ml) and streptomycin (100 mg/ml) (10% FBS-RPMI) for further analysis. Total RNA including miRNA from the T cells

see more was extracted using the mirVana miRNA isolation kit (Ambion, Austin, TX, USA), according to the manufacturer’s protocol. The RNA concentration was quantified using a NanoDrop Spectrophotometer. We converted all miRNAs into corresponding cDNAs in a one-step RT reaction by the method developed by Chen et al. [24]. Briefly, 10 μl reaction mixture containing miRNA-specific stem-loop RT primers (final 2 nM each), 500 μM deoxyribonucleotide (dNTP), 0·5 μl Superscript III (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA), and 1 μg total RNA were used for the RT reaction. The pulsed RT reaction was performed in the following conditions: 16°C for 30 min, followed by 50 cycles at 20°C for 30 s, 42°C for 30 s and 50°C for 1 s. After RT the products were diluted 20-fold before further analysis. A real-time PCR-based method was used to quantify the expression levels of miRNA in this study using the protocol described previously [25]. One microlitre of prepared RT product was used as template for PCR. Then 1 × SYBR Master Mix (Applied Biosystems,

Foster City, CA, USA), 200 nM miRNA-specific forward primer and 200 nM universal reverse primer was added for each PCR reaction. All reactions were performed in duplicate selleck screening library on an ABI Prism 7500 Fast real-time PCR system (Applied Biosystems).

The condition for quantitative PCR is 95°C for 10 min, followed by 40 cycles of 95°C for 15 s and 63°C for 32 s. The expression of the U6 small nuclear RNA was used as endogenous control for data normalization. The threshold cycle (Ct) is defined for as the cycle number at which the change of fluorescence intensity crosses the average background level of the fluorescence signal. First, T cells purified from five AS patients and five healthy controls were analysed for the expression profile of 270 human miRNAs by real-time PCR. We then validated the expression levels of those potentially aberrant expressed miRNAs in T cells from in another 22 AS patients and 18 healthy controls. T cells were lysed with 1% NP-40 (Sigma-Aldrich) in the presence of a proteinase inhibitor cocktail (Sigma-Aldrich). Seventy micrograms of the cell lysates were electrophoresed and transferred to a polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) sheet (Sigma-Aldrich). After blocking, the membranes were incubated with the primary antibodies followed by horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-conjugated secondary antibodies. Mouse monoclonal anti-c-kit, anti-Bcl-2 and anti-TLR-4 antibodies were purchased from Santa Cruz Biotechnology (Santa Cruz, CA, USA), and anti-β-actin was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich as an internal control.