2015 ACVIM Forum Research Abstract Program

Six healthy Beagle dogs were recruited. Baseline examination confirmed normal cardiovascular status based on physical examination, CBC, serum biochemistry, systemic blood pressure, echocardiography, and electrocardiography. Following hemodynamic measurement under general anesthesia, a mild degree of mitral regurgitation was created in three dogs (MR group) through transvenous surgical disruption of the mitral valve chordae tendineae. Three dogs were used as a control group. After 4 weeks of post-operative monitoring, dogs underwent humane euthanasia, and harvested mitral valve leaflets were immediately processed for miRNA isolation and subjected to miRNA sequencing via a high-throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) platform (Illumina Hiseq-2000) . miRNA-seq data from MR dogs were compared to the control group. Quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was utilized for validating NGS data. Bioinformatic analysis of NGS data was conducted to identify a subset of downstream genes targeted by differentially expressed miRNAs.