Identification of miR-138-specific target in the 3′ UTR sequence of NGAL.

<p>(A) Base pairing between miR-138 and wild-type NGAL-3′ UTR (NGAL-WT) or mutant NGAL-3′ UTR (NGAL-MUT) at the miR-138 target site. (B) Luciferase assay of HEK-293T cells transfected with a luciferase reporter gene construct that included an NGAL-3′ UTR wild-type (NGAL-WT, in white columns) or mutant (NGAL-MUT, in black columns) sequence, and then transfected with miR-138. The left column in white (or in black) indicates the control miR-transfected cells, and the right column in white (or in black) indicates the miR-138 transfected cells. Values represent mean ± SE of five experiments. NC: negative control, transfection with a random oligomer instead of miR-138. *** indicates <i>p</i><0.001.