Fig. 1

miR-92a is over-expressed in human colon cancer and its expression in human colon cancer cells is inhibited by butyrate treatment. a The abundance of miR-92a was measured in miRNA microarrays using RNA extracted from sporadic human colon cancer and adjacent normal tissue from the same five people. Data are shown as fold-change of sample to control reference pool signals. For purposes of direct comparison, samples from the same individual were labeled using the same color. *P < 0.05, n = 5. b Changes in miR-92a expression were confirmed by qPCR using the same tissue samples used for microarray. *P < 0.05, n = 5. Human colon cancer cells were treated with 2 mM butyrate for 24 h before extracting RNA. Untreated cells were used as control. The abundance of primary (pri-miR-17-92a), precursor (pre-miR-92a), and mature miR-92a was measured using qPCR in c) HCT116 and d) HT29. Pri-miR-106a-92a was not detected in either cell line. e The abundance of miR-17, miR-18a, miR-19a, miR-19b and miR-20a was measured in HCT116 cells. Bars represent means ± SEM. *P < 0.05, n = 4