Journal of North Khorasan

Abstract Background & objectives: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disease in the central nervous system with an unknown etiology. The prevalence of MS increased worldwide including Iran. The association of rs243324 SNP of SOCS1 gene with MS was evaluated by Vandenbroeck. Also many studies evaluated the role of miRNAs in the pathogenesis of MS. Since miRNAs are small functional units, single base changes in the precursor elements, the mature miRNA sequence and their target gene sequences may drive alteration in their biological function. Material & Methods: In this study, the sequence of rs243324 SNP obtained from NCBI database. The analysis of the sequence of SNP in the presence and absence of the risk allele evaluated via miRBase algorithm. Results: Our results revealed that, the sequence of rs243324 SNP is homologous with the sequence of some miRNAs including: hsa-miR-4732-5p, hsa-miR-3976, hsa-miR-4727-3p and hsa-miR-4793-5p and can change their binding sites and this homology affected by alternation of C to T allele of SNP Conclusion: miRNAs regulate the gene expression at the post-transcriptional level by repression or degradation of their mRNA targets. rs243324 SNP can change the binding sites of some miRNAs and may be effective in the pathogenesis of MS through the change of SOCS1 expression. After demonstration in expression level, SOCS1 can be proposed as a new potential therapeutic target for MS.