Rapid and accurate quantification of isomiRs by RT-qPCR

Currently, microRNAs (miRs) are annotated as a single defined sequence (canonical), even though high-throughput small RNA sequencing has identified miR isoforms (isomiRs) that differ from their canonical counterparts in length, sequence, or both. Here we describe a simple reverse transcriptase-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR)-based assay for quantification of the miR-100-5p_iso_3p:−2 variant. We chose miR-100-5p because the canonical sequence was underrepresented in our evaluation of human plasma. The quantification of miR-100-5p_iso_3 p:−2 from 57 plasma samples demonstrated high concordance between high-throughput RNA sequencing and RT-qPCR results (r = 0.55, p < 0.0001). Of note, we could not detect or quantify miR-100-5p in our plasma samples using a commercial TaqMan canonical miR-100-5p RT-qPCR kit. With these 57 samples, we also adapted this assay to specifically quantify the canonical sequences of miR-122-5p and miR-192-5p. Similar to the results obtained with miR-100-5p_iso_3p:−2, RT-qPCR results for miR-122-5p and miR-192-5p highly correlated with high-throughput RNA sequencing data (miR-122-5p: r = 0.44, p = 0.0005; miR-192-5p: r = 0.72, p < 0.0001). The assay described here can be easily adapted to many different identified isomiRs. Because of the high specificity of isomiRs, their reliable RT-qPCR-based quantification could provide greater resolution and higher accuracy than using canonical sequences.