Abstract
Chordoma is a rare, slow-growing primary malignant neoplasm of the axial skeleton, which arises from the remnants of the notochord. Emerging evidence suggests that microRNAs (miRs) are dysregulated in chordoma tissues and crucially involved in chordoma pathogenesis. In the present study, the expression of 11 candidate miRs were analyzed in chordoma tissues and miR-10a and miR-125a were found to be significantly downregulated compared with controls. Notably, the expression of the primary transcripts, pri-miR-125a and pri-miR-10a was unaltered, suggesting that disturbed microRNA expression may be induced by altered pri-miRNA processing. Previous studies have indicated that disturbed adenosine deaminase acting on RNA (ADAR) expression is able to alter mRNA and miRNA adenosine to inosine (A-to-I) levels associated with cancer pathogenesis. Therefore, the expression of ADAR1 and ADAR2 was analyzed in chordoma tissues. It was found that ADAR1 was significantly overexpressed, which was accompanied by enhanced pre-miR-10a and pri-miR-125a A-to-I editing. These findings suggest that ADAR2 overexpression causes enhanced pre-miR-10a and pri-miR-125a A-to-I editing, which alters mature miR-10a and miR-125a expression and may contribute to chordoma pathogenesis.