Identification of process relevant miRNA in CHO cell lines - Process profiling reveals interesting targets for cell line engineering

Introduction MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNAs which function as regulators of posttranscriptional gene expression by binding to their mRNA targets [1]. MiRNAs are involved in crucial regulations of many signaling and metabolic pathways. In difference to other interfering RNAs (RNAi), miRNAs can target many mRNA, thus having an increased impact on regulation of gene expression. These properties of miRNAs makes them interesting and promising targets for biomarkers and cell line engineering [2,3]. Therefore, we studied miRNA profiles during different culture phases and process conditions and investigated the potential of differentially expressed miRNAs as targets for process optimization. This may help to pave the way to introduce a new layer of control for cell line engineering.