ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT miR-24 is involved in vertebrate LC-PUFA biosynthesis as demonstrated in marine teleost Siganus canaliculatus Cuiying Chen1#, Shuqi Wang1#, Mei Zhang1, Baojia Chen1, Cuihong You1, Dizhi Xie2, Yang Liu1, Óscar Monroig3, Douglas R. Tocher4, Khor Waiho1, Yuanyou Li2* 1 Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology, Shantou University, Shantou 515063, China. 2 College of Marine Sciences, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China. 3 Instituto de Acuicultura Torre de la Sal, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IATS-CSIC), 12595 Ribera de Cabanes, Castellón, Spain 4 Institute of Aquaculture, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK. Present address: College of Marine Sciences, South China Agricultural University, 483 Wushan Road, Guangzhou 510642, China ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT # These authors contributed equally to this work. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email:
[email protected]; tel/fax number: +86 20 85283529. 1 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT ABSTRACT Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as crucial regulators of lipid metabolism. However, the miRNA-mediated regulatory mechanism on long-chain (≥C20) polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) biosynthesis in vertebrates remains largely unknown. Here, we address a potentially important role of miRNA-24 (miR-24) in the regulation of LC-PUFA biosynthesis in rabbitfish Siganus canaliculatus. miR-24 showed significantly higher abundance in liver of rabbitfish reared in brackish water than in seawater for fish fed vegetable oil diets and in S. canaliculatus hepatocyte line (SCHL) cells incubated with alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) than the control group. Similar expression patterns were also observed on the expression of sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1 (srebp1) and LC-PUFA biosynthesis related genes.