Construction of competitive endogenous RNA network reveals regulatory role of long non-coding RNAs in type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Increasing epidemic of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and its comorbidities makes it urgent to understand the pathogenesis and regulatory mechanism. However, little is known about the regulatory role of lncRNAs in diabetes. Here, we constructed a T2DM-related competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network (DMCN) to explore biological function of lncRNAs during the development of diabetes mellitus. This network contained 351 nodes including 98 mRNAs, 86 microRNAs and 167 lncRNAs. Functional analysis showed that the mRNAs in DMCN were annotated into some diabetes-related pathways. Furthermore, mTOR-centred subnetwork was extracted and ncRNA-involved mTOR pathway was established. Finally, we validated that NEAT1 was potentially communicated with mTOR signalling target protein mLST8 via the association with miR-181b. These findings provide significant insight into lncRNA regulatory network in T2DM.